Taiwanese Capacitors Leaking, Exploding

ackthpt writes "A few astute slashdot readers were on to something back when this article was published. After a tip (at e-insight.net) on failing caps over at amdmb I did a little looking around and found this article by Dennis Zogbi on TTI Inc.'s site, which goes into more detail. In a nutshell, many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte. Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc. The problem may be widespread, as many consumer electronics made with these capacitors may also fail prematurely. Gary Headlee specializes in Abit motherboards, but as his FAQ states, he will work on other makes and the FAQ has more info on capacitor problems."

Comments

Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

Re:Recalls?

[shivianzealot]

Not many, I should hope. Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Re:Recalls?

[victim]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags...

Well I would hope none. The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Re:Recalls?

[zsazsa]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

(Slightly OT)

While not quite as bad, this is becoming a problem in older automotive ECUs (engine control units). The problem is especially rampant in DSM cars (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser) manufactured between 1989 and 1994. I know because it happened to me. All the big electrolytic capacitors leaked all over the place, pretty much destroying the board. One of the symptoms is a 'rotten seafood smell' coming from behind the console. :)

Mitsubishi wanted around $750 for a replacement. Luckily since this is such a problem, refurbished ECUs are available for cheap.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable. They don't meet MILSPEC for electronic components. An F16 fighter for example, won't contain a single electrolytic capacitor.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive. Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

Want to see some fun stuff? Do a search for "capacitor" and "Bose" on Google. Bose had a TON of problems with bad capacitors in their car stereo systems(installed on millions of vehicles from at least a dozen manufacturers), and it took years for the car manufacturers to fess up to the problem and offer recalls. Bose knew about the problem for years, so one presumes the car companies did. The Ford Pinto incident apparently never taught companies anything; they still don't issue recalls until enough people die/get hurt that it becomes in the company's financial interests to announce a recall.

Some never did announce a recall, until recently. Audi used Bose speakers in the 1991 200 Quattro 20v turbo(car I happen to drive), and the orientation of the circuit boards for the rear speakers were such that the (conductive) electrolytic fluid often caused serious shorts- the Audi enthusiast community knows of at least a few 200q20v's that met their untimely ends due to speaker FIRES. Loud thumping, smoking, popping, etc are more common.

It was pretty much exclusive to the one model, of which only about 2000-3000 at most were imported. The number of reported problems were low(I'd say maybe half a dozen fires), but keep in mind- this wasn't a Ford Taurus will millions on the road.

Audi continuously lied to us- we have proof that they knew from about 1992 onwards that the speakers were defective. A year or two ago we banded together and got a LOT of owners who had experienced speaker problems to call in and report the problem.
When we called Audi, each owner was separately told "we have no knowledge of any problems with your model vehicle"(or something to that effect.) I guess they didn't think we would talk to each other, eh?

Only after several owners submitted paperwork to NHSTA did we see any action; early spring of this year, Audi -announced- the problem and said there would be a recall. It took months to get the replacement circuit boards in and for the recall procedure to get out to dealerships.

Still, guess what? If you report a problem with your car to NHSTA, you can't actually follow up with anyone at NHSTA. The ONLY people you can talk to are a bunch of lazy government call center workers who can ONLY mail you a form or take information on a new case over the phone. You could have evidence of over 50 vehicles that have had said safety problem, and guess what? The call center couldn't care less, they just want to mail you a @#$! form.

Ask any Audi owner and they'll tell you- they love their car. My 200q20v is well over a decade old, but(thanks to a $500 ECU modification) does 0-60 in under 6 seconds, has all wheel drive for incredible traction, 5-speed, stealthy looks(looks like a 5000, basically) and huge amounths of interior and trunk space. Galvanized panels(standard in most audis since 1985 or so) means that there is barely a spot of rust anywhere on the car despite living its entire life in the Northeast US.) Audis are the most utilitarian of german luxury cars, and you usually get more for your money(in terms of features and interior quality) compared to a BMW or Mercedes...and Audi's all wheel drive system is still the best(despite what Subaru would like you to believe, Audi has been doing AWD since 1980, dominating the rallying world at the time. Subaru is about 15 years behind the game.)

But, ask any Audi owner what they think of the company, and the answer will probably change dramatically. It is a terrible shame when such a great product is hampered by piss-poor support.

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Hmm - I take it the server grade components only blow up after the server is linked on slashdot?

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Actually, I would rather be hit in the face with a bunch of capacitors than aerosolized sodium azide, which is highly toxic by US definition, and is about as healthy as sodium cyanide powder. It is commonly used as a laboratory preservative since it can kill just about anything...

The NaN3 and ignitor are not actually in the air bag - they are in an inflater, with a filter so they don't end up in the air bag.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can afford to buy an Audi, but you're too tight to replace some cheap speakers that might CATCH ON FIRE AND DESTROY YOUR CAR?

I agree, Audi should ultimately pay for the replacement, but in the interim...

I'm sure your family appreciates such thrift.. what, did you get them each a personal fire extinguisher for Christmas?

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can afford to buy an Audi, but you're too tight to replace some cheap speakers that might CATCH ON FIRE AND DESTROY YOUR CAR?

I agree, Audi should ultimately pay for the replacement, but in the interim...

I'm sure your family appreciates such thrift.. what, did you get them each a personal fire extinguisher for Christmas?

Actually, I unplugged them as soon as I heard of the problem, and then took the speaker units apart, and repaired the amplifier boards with new components.

I then wrote an extremely detailed document(using LyX and LaTeX, btw!) giving part numbers and places to order from, tool recommendations, etc for other owners so they could fix their own cars. I then posted it on the mailing list I administer for 200q20v owners(we have about 250 people on the list) so they could fix their own cars as well. The mailing list was instrumental in letting other owners know, since many of these cars have changed owners to the point that Audi doesn't know who to send recall notices to.

I was also one of the people who pushed HARD on Audi to acknowledge the problem and get a recall going.

So pardon, Mr. Troll, if I take offense at being accused of not taking safety seriously...and YES, I DO carry a fire extinguisher in the car, for myself and as a good samaritan for other motorists.

I know someone whose car was saved because a retired firefighter happened to drive by and put out the engine fire with his(very large) fire extinguisher. BTW- the car was extensively modified beyond original specs, it was not the fault of the car company in any way/shape/form.

FYI- if you want to be prepared to help others(or save your car should it catch fire), don't waste time on those little teeny units, they're worthless. 1 to 2 litre foam units are the best for cars; Home Depot sells them for about $40 or less. That said, be extremely careful if you do tackle even a small vehicle fire.

Lastly, replacement is easier said than done. The whole reason there is a problem is because each speaker is amplified separately- a line-level signal is sent between the radio head and the speakers(which each contain an amplifier with said capacitors.) That means low-voltage, low-current wire, which isn't suitable for non-amplified speakers.

So, in order to replace ANY speaker, you have to replace them ALL, along with all the wiring for the speakers themselves. It is a $500-$1,000 proposition.

I solved the problem for $5 in electronic components, a heat gun, and a soldering iron.

Re:Recalls?

[SN74S181]

The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.


I used to want to get a blunderbuss to shoot chip components at people. That pesky AVX SMD capacitor vendor shows up again in the lobby; *blam* shoot 'em with a blend of 0805 chip capacitors and MELF resistors.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

I think that's overly harsh on electrolytics. Like everything else, what you get depends on what you buy. You can buy from respected companies that have been making good caps for 20 years, or you can buy from whatever random Chinese company was cheapest this week. You can settle for any specs you can get, or you can insist on caps that are rated for 5000 hours of operation at 105 degrees Celcius (hotter than boiling water!).

There are also system design issues. You can push the caps to the very limit of their rated ripple current, or you can use more caps and share the current around.

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Medical stuff routinely uses electrolytics. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to fail a lot less often than doctors and nurses.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

They do not. The lifetime depends on the grade selected by the engineer, and how hard the design pushes the cap. A good cap used properly can last for many years of continuous service. That's good enough for many applications, even in safety-critical systems.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive.

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.

Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

It depends entirely on the service life that is needed, and the degree of redundancy you can afford. Satellites and airbags have to remain in service for decades without repair, so electrolytics are probably unacceptable. Medical equipment generally doesn't need such high reliability, and frequently uses electrolytics. (Seriously. Med equipment is regularly replaced, there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians, and the critical stuff has spares sitting on shelves.) Telecom equipment can afford redundancy in almost everything, and so it's full of electrolytics.

Re:Recalls?

[plover]

While you are correct in your assertion that tantalum capacitors are (or at least should be) used where reliability is paramount, there are severe environmental issues with much of the tantalum mining going on today.

80% of the world's supply of coltan, the ore from which tantalum is extracted, is found in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal mining has caused large sections of Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve forests to be cleared. The U.N. has determined that 90% of the gorillas in these parks have been killed in the last five years, primarily by the illicit miners, leaving only about 3000 remaining. The miners kill the gorillas as a threat to their safety, and sell the meat for extra income.

It's not an easy problem to solve: coltan sold for upwards of $600/kg in the late 1990s (although it's down to about $100/kg today.) A team of miners can produce about one kg per day, and each miner can earn about $200 US/month in a region where the average income is $10 US/month. Technology's demand for tantalum has driven the poorer residents of these nations to take the easy money where possible. And according to the U.N., both sides in neighboring Rwanda have been funding their civil war in large part by sales of this illegally mined tantalum.

What can be done? It is reported that deposits of coltan have been found in dormant volcanos in Greenland. And there are legitimate mines elsewhere in the world. MoBo manufacturers can and should agree to purchase and use only "gorilla safe" or "non-Congo" tantalum caps (or they can continue to use better quality electrolytic caps.) But this will only occur if the demand for gorilla-safe tantalum crosses some magical political threshhold. I wish I knew what it would take.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost accurate except for the following:
- There are exceptions in MIL SPEC to allow for Electrolytic as Tantalum caps are not available for > 60V or so.
- Tantalum capacitors have higher CV^2, so they are SMALLER for the same capacitance.
- For low ESR applications, Tantalum is still better than cheap electrolytics. OSCON, ceremic, POS caps are way better than Tantalum though.
- Caps have pre-stressed "vents" on the top part of the aluminium can so that's what opens up instead of blowing up.
- In audio applications, you don't want Tantalum caps anyway. Electrolytic is better than Tantalum (film caps are better, but can't get high values)

Re:Recalls?

[LUN!X]

you're excluding the obvious benefits of electrolytic tech here dude.. i've picked up countless stereo amps at garage sales that just need a few electrolytics replaced. they dry out, one channel goes out, and i get an amp for 2 bucks plus a dollar for a fistful of caps.
on the other hand, i've never encountered a legitimate leakage aside from early wall socket experiments at school :D they make little rockets with a smoke trail, and the legs left behind sticking outta the socket make a cool shock hazard to prune the weak from society

Re:Recalls?

[chriso11]

I use tantalums instead of electrolytics as a rule. Electrolytic caps have a higher ESR, and the dielectric fluid is prone to leakage. The lifetime of an electrolytic is shorter than that of a tantalum - they have a finite lifetime, as the liquid electrolyte evaporates.
While it is true about tantalumns having a particularly impressive failure mechanism, once you remember not to reverse the polarity you don't have problems. Electrolytics also behave poorly when reversed. In addition, electrolytics have a minimum operating voltage and a maximum operation voltage. And how's this:
"Conventional aluminum electrolytic capacitors which have gone 6 months or more without voltage applied may have to be reformed."
Electrolytics are also physically larger than Tantalums, not smaller. They are indeed more expensive, but worth it.

Yes, I use ceramics whenever possible (esp. NP0/C0G, none of the x7r or worse grades). Ceramics are the best general purpose - no polarity issues, small physical size allows them to be extremely close to the DUT (for bypassing), and they have pretty good SRF. The only problems - the max capacitance you can get isn't too good. Polyprop/polystyrene are better for high fidelity audio type signals (earthquake detection anybody?).

Re:Recalls?

[Noose For A Neck]

One of the symptoms is a 'rotten seafood smell' coming from behind the console.

Wow, I'll bet that's the last time you let your mom take out the dashboard, huh?

Re:Recalls?

[pz]

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.


He was serious, and so am I when I say that I routinely design with tantalums when I want high reliability, electrolytics when it doesn't matter as much. The fellow you mention from Motorola (and his associates) don't understand the problems with tantalums: they are extremely reliable, and have far superior specifications than equivalent electrolytics, if you simply derate the maximum voltage by a factor of 2. Eg, if your design calls for the capacitor seeing a maximum differential of 15V, specify a 30V capacitor.

My father, also an electrical engineer, and I have separately been doing this for decades (him, something like 5, me, something like 2) and not seen a single tantalum failure. My father used to see a lot of tantalum failures until he took the time to understand the failure conditions and derated the specs. But, this applies when the options are electrolytic or tantalum.

When the options are ceramic or tantalum, as you suggest with the fellow from Motorola, there's a huge difference. Ceramics are not available in value ranges that electrolytics can be manufactured in (in part because it's difficult to make a realllllllly thin sheet of ceramic, plate it on one side, and roll it up). Ceramics, for the same value range as tantalums, have superior specifications but larger physical size, as long as you stay away from the lower end of the quality spectrum. Comparing, however, the selection of tantalums over electrolytics against ceramics over tantalums is, well, like two different kinds of fruit.

In sum, given my druthers, in larger values, it's tantalum, unless the value range necessary or cost contstraints precludes them, in which case the choice is electrolytics. In smaller values/higher frequencies, it's ceramic.

Re:Recalls?

[damien_kane]

Hmm - I take it the server grade components only blow up after the server is linked on slashdot?

No, after the first slashdotting, the server merely melts.
If, by some miracle the server still accepts requests afterwards, it is not until the second slashdotting that it actually explodes...

Re:Recalls?

[Tangurena]

There were an enormous number of electrolytic capacitors that went boom in Car audio systems. Surprisingly, it was only the capacitors made by Nichicon and almost always the 7mm high capacitors. Pity, nichicon was the low bidder on almost everything, and they were the only supplier in the world of 7mm high axial electrolytics.

A previous employer of mine made somewhere near $10,000,000 in repair costs (both in-warranty and out of warranty) because of these capacitors. Radio went poof? $250 repair please. Bose Amp squeals like a siren and pops like a canon? $200 please.

Ford could not believe that our repair shop needed as many capacitors as we were using, and sent out auditors and engineers to get a grip on what they were convinced was out of line repair expenses (or maybe outright fraud). When we showed them radio after radio, and Bose amplifier after another with exactly the same failure mode, they started waking up. We even gave them boxes of ruined circuit boards for them to analyse. The real kicker was the Bose amp used in Chevy Caprices: the board is mounted so that the capacitors are suspended from the board, the electrolyte boils and spurts out of the base of the caps so hard that it splatters all over the board. Once they saw these, and learned how they are mounted in the vehicle, they went after nichicon.

Because of the size of the part, and that nichicon has a stranglehold on the market, we had to order parts directly from them. When you need 2,000 to 4,000 per month, you use them far faster than the US car makers ordered for replacement parts. However, instead of ordering the 65C rated parts, like the OEMs used, we ordered the 105C parts. Still took 12-20 weeks to send the boxes from Japan to Florida. That is real fun committing your employer to buying stuff for a year at a time and having to wait months for each delivery.

Because of heat and humidity issues, the south florida climate accelerates the aging process for these parts. What fails in 2-3 years down here, may take take much longer for you folks who live with frost. Heck, car batteries only last 2 years before they need to be replaced.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a 1000uF tantalum then? Also where are the
400V tantalum's? Basically there are times when you have no choice but to use electroytic capacitors.
What you do though is buy the best long life high temperature ones you can lay your hands on whatever the application happens to be. What you don't do is buy cheap rubbish from China etc. You only get what you pay for, and the problem is that most people only want to pay for cheap rubbish these days.
b

Re:Recalls?

[RoofPig]

there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians>

I'm not entirely sure I follow your logic on that bit. Because a doctor might accidently hit a wrong button or something, there's no point in making sure equipment will work without failing?

Re:Recalls?

[seanadams.com]

I guess it's ime to plug a few tantalum caps into 110VAC and see what happens... :)

Re:Recalls?

[yakfacts]

Mil-grade tantalum caps are very expensive, and
very good.

Re:Recalls?

[ckedge]

.
I call bullshit.

I'm not saying that coltan production hasn't caused hell in Central Africa. It has. But 2001 demand for Ta2O5 was 2600 tons, of which ONLY 2-400 tons were produced in Central Africa. That's only 10 percent. A FAR FAR cry from 80 percent.

http://www.roskill.co.uk/tantalum.html

Production has been ramping up in Australia by SoG, they were expecting to produce 1200 tons this year, and are expected to reach 2600 tons per year by 2006.

http://www.sog.com.au/web/aboutsgwindex.htm

So there is a huge alternative to "conflict coltan". You just need to make sure that you buy your Ta caps from people who only get their raw material from a non-central-african source.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

While it is true about tantalumns having a particularly impressive failure mechanism, once you remember not to reverse the polarity you don't have problems.

Yes, you do. When a standard tantalum develops a fault, the resultant heating makes the fault worse. The slightest pinhole defect tends to turn into a catastrophic failure. Even when properly installed, they occassionally fail in service.

The only problems - the max capacitance you can get isn't too good.

One more problem with ceramics: some regulators don't like the low ESR and oscillate! One of my colleagues found this out the hard way, and had to put a series resistor on his prototype. You don't normally have to worry about components being too good...

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

Quality costs money, and money is limited. If you spend all your money improving one thing, you don't make it much better, but you can't afford quality anywhere else, and so the overall results are poor. Once something is "pretty good", you don't keep spending on it. You stop and ask "What's the cheapest way to improve results?" and that tells you where you should be spending.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

The fellow you mention from Motorola (and his associates) don't understand the problems with tantalums: they are extremely reliable, and have far superior specifications than equivalent electrolytics, if you simply derate the maximum voltage by a factor of 2.

I'm looking at an AVX data sheet and it shows that 50% derating produces a factor of 0.006 decrease in failure rate.

But the base failure rate for the standard grade is 1% max per 1000 hours, which is huge. Assuming 10 capacitors per device, the factor of 0.006 from voltage derating, and a factor of 0.4 from temperature derating, that's a failure rate of 240 ppm/1000 hours. Not exactly a six sigma quality level. For one year of operation, that's a failure rate of 0.2%. For three years, 0.63% failure rate. For ten years, 2.1%. For 50 years, 10%.

So what does 0.2% per year mean? If the device is a line card, and the telephone switch has 10,000 cards, that's a failure every 18 days. That's often enough that you'd have to have a $100k/year employee on call 24x7. That's $1 of expense per capacitor. Not so cheap. I don't even want to think about the cost for devices that are geographically deployed, like electric meters and embedded controllers.

There's also the failure-mode issue. When they fail, tantalums blast their (electrically conductive) guts all over the inside of the enclosure. That's an appalling thing to have happen in an enclosure filled with $50k processor cards.

I stand by my opinion that tantalums are ungood. If you just want to screw the consumer, electrolytics give more screwage per dollar. If you need high-rel and can afford scheduled replacements, good-quality electrolytics. Otherwise, ceramics.

Have you seen the new solid aluminum caps? Better volumetric capacity than tantalums, ESR nearly as good as ceramics. I haven't bothered to look up the data sheets, but I'd imagine that aluminum oxide has a lower failure rate than tantalum oxide.

Re:Recalls?

[pz]

Interesting. I don't normally use AVX components, but this discussion has motivated me to re-examine our assumptions about tantalum reliabilities. We have, however, as previously stated, not seen one fail with the 50% voltage derating.

Solid alumninum sounds very interesting -- hadn't heard of those caps. I'd agree that from basic principles, alumninum oxide should be *much* more stable than tantalum oxide.

Re:Recalls?

[plover]

I didn't say 80% of production occurred in Central Africa, I said that it is estimated that 80% of the world's ore is located there.

Regardless, I'm very pleased that production has shifted so heavily from the Congo to other, presumably more responsible, sources.

I have a question for you, though. How do I, the average consumer, identify the source of the metal when purchasing caps? I try to make responsible choices when presented with alternatives, but I don't see the "No gorillas were harmed in the mining of the tantalum used in the capacitors on this motherboard" logo. Of course, getting back to the main topic, I know my current iWill MoBo is "gorilla safe" because I can see the electrolytic caps. But how do you tell? Which capacitor manufacturers are the responsible ones?

Re:Recalls?

[grub]

..electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

You guys are all full of crap.

On Star Trek they use flux capacitors which I presume are far more reliable than your Fancy Pants, Big City tantalum or electrolyte capacitors.

Re:Recalls?

[RoofPig]

Oops. I forgot to end my italics tag looks like. I guess preview is there for a reason. Anyhow, I guess that makes sense. I suppose what threw me off initially was the link you were establishing between the equipment and the physician. I took it to mean you were saying that because human error exists, it's pointless to eliminate all of the machine errors possible. This at first sounded absurd to me because they each have their own sets of problems and I'm all about getting rid of the ones you can, be it equipment or otherwise. So basically I thought your position was along the lines of, "Since there are going to be errors anyways, we may as well not fix these ones. There will still be other mistakes. We can't reach for perfection so why fix what we can?" I agree with the basics of what you're saying though, the whole doing the most you can with what you have bit. I'm not sure I agree to the point of always going with "the cheapest way to improve results" though, unless you meant with the magnitude of said results being equal.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

I suspect the 1%/1000 hours rate is very conservative. I personally wouldn't worry about putting them in an entertainment or convenience system, but I'd be leery about important devices.

Here's a link to Vishay's solid aluminum capacitors. They're apparently constructed like water-based electrolytics, but with a solid polymer instead of water. ESR is good: 10 milliohm. Reliability is good: 200,000 hours at 65 deg. C. Tempco is awesome: -5%/+10% value change from -55 to +105 deg. C. Major downside is that they hate excessive inrush current. I think they're also a bit pricey.

Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this happen to my Abit KA7 motherboard.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

So did my roommate. However, as bad as this is, ABIT has a lot more stability issues other than capacitors:

http://www.xtremetek.com/info/index.php?name=kt7 -r ant&page=1

This site isn't very large and the article writer received over 100 emails about faulty ABIT mobos and to say the least, ABIT's tech support is horrible.

Re:Abit KA7

[ibpooks]

I had the exact same thing happen on two Abit KA7-100 motherboards running Athlon 800 processors. I've made it a point to never buy Abit again after I had to spend several hundred dollars to replace two critical machines on short notice.

Re:Abit KA7

[Dystopium]

I had the excat same thing happen on my Abit-KA7. Had all the right features, to bad i didn't get to use that POS for more than six months.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave my old KA7-100 to my friend and it died about half a year after that. Almost all the caps burst.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel very sorry about your late friend. To die because of a faulty motherboard! Quite a pitty.

May he rest in peace.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all did. That's why this article Exists. My KA7 killed over after a year and a half, I sent it back to Abit and they replaced it (Clearly they know about the issue) and that was well over a year ago.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one of my BP6 motherboards died of this.

I'm going to be looking for something else before the other two die.

Pinback

Re:Abit KA7

[Bandazaar]

I had 4 capacitors blow on my mobo, a KA7-100, and my EE prof thought I had somehow generated a high voltage somewhere ... That was what I started to believe. Anyways, I bought new capacitors from a different company and soldered them in, and the board worked flawlessly since.

For my part I must admit I like the board, but for those that had to pay Abit $25 + shipping to get it repaired or those that had to buy a new one, I feel your pain.

--
SuSE 8.1 rocks !!!

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the exact same thing happen on two Abit KA7 motherboards running Athlon 850 processors. I sent both of them to Abit for $50. I got both motherboards back. Abit fixed the capacitors that had blown. However, there were capacitors they did not replace that were ready to blow. The motherboards ended up giving up on me, again. So, I gave up on them, and Abit. I will never buy from Abit again. MSI all the way baby!

Re:Abit KA7

[krepta]

between me and another friend, we had four ka7-100 mobos die, due to this. apparently you can get replacement caps through digikey for $10-20 if you're willing to _carefully_ solder them on the board.

Re:Abit KA7

[jindel]

I had something (a cap?) go horribly wrong on one of my ABIT VP6 boards with less than a year in production. The resulting fire actually fused the bottom nic to the pci slot.

I'm just grateful that it was noticed before the FM200 went off.

so...

[iamthemoog]

there's magic water in capacitors as well as magic smoke ?

Re:so...

[billd]

there's magic water in capacitors maybe so! As soon as I get home, I'm going to check both my taiwanese motherboards for bad caps. If there's any sign of leakage, or if the +ive ends are bulging, out they'll come!!!

Thanks for the warning, whoever.

Re:so...

[gnuadam]

It tastes like burning.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly most of those people aren't going to get their magic water replaced. Taiwanese manufacturers are notoriously hard to get hold of when you want something replaced.

Damn happy I bought a Mac. Same chance of bad capacitors, but at least I know Apple would fix it without problems.

I hope I get modded down for this....

[Lord_Slepnir]

and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor

does that mean that they have a bung-hole now?

huh-huh....he said bunghole..huh-huh

Re:I hope I get modded down for this....

[Anonymous Coward]

A bung is the plug that goes into the hole in the side of a wine cask (the bung hole).

Re:I hope I get modded down for this....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not limited to wine casks.

This also applies to poly drums. They have 2" bungholes. :P

Re:I hope I get modded down for this....

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunghole is the opening in a wooden barrel.

True

[Anonymous Coward]

Already had this problem with an Abit VP6 mainboard. One of the capacitors near the CPU socket exploded. No dammage except a dead motherboard.

My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

My MSI board failed a couple of months ago, and we didn't have a dog to blame the smell on.

I noticed many of the caps around the memory banks appeared blown - there was a lot of brown residue around the top. The smell occured a week or so (perhaps?) before final failure.

For my money, even though the original board cost around $120, I just bought a $50 replacement from ECS. It took most of the original memory (2 DIMM slots only, compared to the 3 slots in the original), and otherwise did what was needed without spending repair money on what's now an old-tech product.

The machine has an Athlon 900 T-bird, now has a 1/2G of ram (did have 3/4) and doesn't really do a great deal other than email, web, games, photoshop. Sure, the extra 1/4G of ram would have been nice to keep but for the money of even thinking about the repair I'd be better off just recycling and buying new with a DDR333 system.

Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[bogie]

Can you tell which model that was? I've got a K7T266Pro2 which works great, but I'd be interested in hearing which one yours was and then checking into what other MSI board used the same capactitors.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, I had that board and it blew, too. I replaced it with a cheap Gigabyte board and have had no problems. Not the same in features, but the lack of problems is worth it.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Mindwarp]

Had exactly the same thing happen to my MSI K7T266A about six months ago. In my case it was two of the 1100uF capacitors to the north of the processor that popped their tops one day.

Needless to say, I won't be buying MSI again.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

It was nothing that recent. I believe I bought it in jan/feb of 2001. Perhaps a K7T Turbo 2?

Re:My MSI board failed.

[alizard]

If I were you, I'd check those URLs and take a look at your new motherboard. You may have just purchased the same set of problems you think you've fixed.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[shepd]

>I just bought a $50 replacement from ECS.

Woohoo! Nothing like PcChips replacement parts...

(yes, I'm being sarcastic)

If I were you I'd buy a spare. ;-)

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, so did mine. Actually, it was the second one, for the first one I got a replacement.

After this I've been asking around and from my friends alone I've heard of 8 MSI K7T boards just dying after a year or so of use. Now eight might not sound like much, but considering how many people I asked it's atleast half of all people who have those boards.

Just great.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

ECS has so far proven to be quite good. I've had their k7s5a for quite a while and it works excellently.

Tim

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Skuld-Chan]

Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair.

Actually this is one of the easier repairs one can do to a motherboard - assuming you know how to use a pencil soldering iron. If you still have it mail it me :)

Re:My MSI board failed.

[shepd]

>ECS has so far proven to be quite good. I've had their k7s5a for quite a while and it works excellently.

I'm happy about that, but you'll have no trouble proving that ECS is PcChips, and that PcChips changes their name occasionally (ok, very often) because it gets tarnished faster than iron by the sea. Basically, here's what PcChips does (very easy to verify, if you like):

- Pirates BIOS code.
- Manufactures and uses fake cache chips (ie: Plastic blobs with metal bits sticking out -- nothing inside).
- Fakes chipsets (they often make their own in-house chipsets, which are famous for being buggy and slow, and are known to brand/name them according to OEMs wishes)
- Uses misleading names on their in-house chipsets (eg: TXPro, VXPro, etc, etc)
- Fakes processor speeds (they used a batch of slower than expected chipsets and simply re-programmed the BIOS to always multiply the speed by 100, no matter what you set the FSB speed to)
- Uses low quality/grade parts whenever possible
- Makes chipsets that silently corrupt hard drives (my personal experience on another PcChips mobo about 3 years ago).

Also, a former PcChips employee informed me that PcChips executives were once sued for being involved in remarking processor speeds (can't verify this one, but it sure goes along with the other fraud PcChips commits).

There's more, read about PcChips here if you like. That site is the only place you're going to get help should you lose the box/manual to your mobo (since the majority don't have a model number marked), so keep it bookmarked! Deja can sometimes be some help if you want to check if your board is a PcChips board or not.

Some other PcChips brand names (ie: My short shitlist): Ability, Alton, Amptron, Aristo, Asia Gate, Asiatech, Assa, Atrend, Elpina, Eurone, EuroCom, Fugu, Fugutech, Hi Sing, Houston Tech, Hsing Tech, H Tech, Matsonic, Minstaple, PCWare, Pine, Protac, Warpspeed.

And, just to let you know, you'll find if you ever take the machine into a shop, they'll probably charge you double when they see a PcChips mobo inside. I know I do, because I know it's going to take twice as long to fix (if possible).

But hey, best of luck with the board! I've got one PcChips machine in the house, and other than having to disconnect the video before powering up, it's been fine for a couple of years.

Ouch

[athakur999]

Imagine having a Beowulf cluster that used these things. That'd be a big repair bill...

Dude... You're going to Hell!

[disc-chord]

Like many /.ers I like to save money by putting together my own machines. Unfortunatly we do not get the benifits of extended warranties you find with Dell, Gateway, etc... This is why I highly recommend you purchase your parts from people who have been in business for a while and offer considerable warranties. Not some gimp who just put up a website and will be out of business next week. And be sure to SAVE your warranty cards!

That is of course unless you do something to void your warranty... But for the rest of us, this should be a good reminder of why warranties on pc parts are really important.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

Ordering from sites that offer short warranties isn't that big of a deal since most manufacturers offer 1 year or longer warranties on thier products anyway. All the additional 30 day dealer warranty allows you to do is return the item to the retailer instead of the manufacturer. In my experience it's been cheaper to deal directly with the manufacturer. Depending on the item some will drop ship you a new item while yours is in transit to them, others will pay for shipping. Of course each manufacturer varies, and the companies that have had the worst products also seem to have the worst warranty and rma policies.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[MyHair]

My (brick & mortar) company had a problem with caps blowing in the power supply of custom mini PCs at customer locations. However this was a major distributor who built these 'custom' PCs for us, so we had warranty protection. I believe we got the PS manufacturer to foot the bill for the replacement PS'es and paid for us service techs to replace them on several thousand units. (We had a special code on our ticketing system to charge our time to 3rd parties.)

However it was still a nasty problem. It took a few months to replace them all because generally every PC was in a different geographical location and we had to coordinate with the customer.

During the time before the problem was discovered and solved the PSes were dying left and right, and they tended to blow chips on the hard drives, mother board, and modems when they went. Many customers lost their data and weren't happy. (I told them to back up and gave them the disks to do it, though.)

A warranty is definitely important for many companies and individuals.

However for my personal PCs I buy cheap parts (not the cheapest, though...motherboards and RAM I now pay more for) and rarely get burned. I figure I get burned seldom enough that it works out in my favor in the long run, but I back up my important data and have the knowledge and spare parts to get myself up and running again when things go South.

Slashdot seems to be slashdotted today, so here goes a submit with no preview.... (takes too long to see the preview if at all)

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[psychosis]

Minor point of correction - what you describe is a "cross-shipment." A "drop shipment" is when I order an UPS from someone like CDW, and APC ships from their factory to my location.
I only mention because I caused some confusion with an sales account rep by confusing these two shipping methods...

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

You are absolutly correct, I realized my mistake after submitting the previewed comment and well.... no edit your own comment function here unfortunatly.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[Ryan Amos]

Bad caps take a while to blow. Much longer than the 90 day warranty. I've had caps blow on me on a $9000 Ascend Max 6000 (512-channel dialup router) and it was out of service contract. So what'd I do? I went to ye local electronics store, bought more caps, soldered them back on, and it worked. It's worth a try to fix. Of course, on the Ascend, 3 of the fans decided to die randomly and the caps overheated, but still..

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[Cramer]

You've obviously never tried to get the manufacturer to replace a failed motherboard. It'll take most of that 1yr warranty to get it done.

I had Tyan replace a bad motherboard a few years ago. It took six months. It took three weeks to get a support monkey to send me the RMA request form...

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

I recently replaced a Soyo Dragon V Plus. It took them about 3.5 weeks. I had Abit replace several boards with bad capacitors and they took about 4 weeks each. Most people don't bother dealing with the warranty so many companies are sloppy. That's no reason to not get it replaced by the manufacturer, especially when it's a warranty covered issue or a manufacturer defect.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[Miksa]

That's one reason I could never order online. When I decide to buy something I want it immediately and when something is broken I wan't it even faster. Couple years ago I bought cd-rw drive and I had to wait it for a month because they didn't have it stocked and importer had problems delivering it. Never again. Last time I bought new system (mb+proc, because I burned my earlier because of stupid mistake) I considered my options for a little over day and after I had a list it took maybe three hours when I had them in my hands (took a bit extra time because I had to go get some cash first). When the first mobo turned out to be faulty I just headed back to shop to get new one.

apple airport

[Anonymous Coward]

premature capacitor failure led to apple recalling the first generation Apple Airports (802.11b base stations). I think the symptom was similar (capacitor blew out)

I thought it was because I violated that EULA...

[mog]

That takes a load off of my mind... So THAT'S why my computer blew up!

That's disturbing

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking about getting a new MB since mine's about a year old, but if crappy caps are the norm I may want to wait.

The sad thing is that from one of the articles I read it seems like this has been going on for about a year but it hasn't been solved. Apparently, good capacitors cost too much!

-Thorn

Re:That's disturbing

[gezerk]

>> seems like this has been going on for about a year but it hasn't been solved

Many manufacturers buy their parts in massive lots. They may not have known about the problem till those lots were exhausted.
If they did discover the problem, they probably chose to accept the failure rate and honor the warranties if they were called on to do so(not likely). Their only other choice would be a recall.

I find it amazing we don't have more problems with components. In light of the growth of the PC market in the last few years it seems electronics parts makers have been doing a pretty good job.

shopping list?

[visualight]

I'm in the middle of shopping for a new board. Now I'm afraid to make a decision until I can find a list of boards that are "safe". If anyone finds such a list please post it!

Re:shopping list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an Intel motherboard. They are rock solid. I've never had a single problem with them. I stopped using those taiwanese boards for a long time. By the way, a capacitor just blew in my friend's Soyo motherboard a few days ago.

Re:shopping list?

[paganizer]

I try to stick with Gigabyte if possible; Tyan or AMD if not.
Gigabyte is not usually the fastest, and usually has fewer bells and whistles, but I usually just build server grade machines and every bell and whistle is an additional point of failure.

Re:shopping list?

[ackthpt]

I just checked out an Asus A7V8X and it's popped with Rubycon and Nichicon, both japanese, caps. Sigh of relief. I'll be picking one of these up in December and entrusting it with a XP 2600/333

On a side note, there's a fried powersupply at work here with Rulycon caps. Imitations, surely.

Cheap capacitors

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Nothing new about the annoucement. Cheap electrolytic capacitors have been around and been a problem for years. There are other failure modes. i've fixed several old Mac's where the cap has pissed it's electrolyte all over the motherboard. Usually removing the cap, scrubbing the board and installing a new cap fixes the problem. Even worse is when the electrolyte is lost gradually. The product that it's in gets flakey over time and the problem is very hard to find. These problems are all made worse by exposing your gear to high temperatures. Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.

Re:Cheap capacitors

[Soko]

Going under temp is just as bad, if not worse, as going over temp. The cost-consious id10t who approved using an electrolyte based on H2O should be liberally bathed in it - it's the worst possible thing to put in a cap. Being water based, if the electrolyte in the capacitor freezes, it expands and basically mashes the caps plates together. If they touch, well, hope it was time for an upgrade. The electrolyte would normally act as anti-freeze, but being water based means that it freezes a lot sooner. All the wrong things happen with water in the capacitor.

If you fly, keep your electronic gear with you, since the baggage compartment of an airplane isn't usually temperature controlled. Or, if you live in Sweden, Canada or any place that can get low screen temps, keep that laptop in the car or someplace warm so you con't freeze a cap and blow up your gear. In any event, insulate it from temerature extremes whenever possible.

Soko

Re:Cheap capacitors

[Anonymous Coward]

There must be an oil shortage or something. Any product you get these days contains almost none of it. Take hand soaps for example, which are a fat and base. Most hand soaps sold today mostly contain a base and thickener. It removes the oils from your hands, but leaves the stains. The consumer ends up using far more soap to do less and is rewarded with dry, chapped hands. You can clean your hands better with straight motor oil!

Fat free foods are simply thickeners, emulsifiers, and water without the fat. Marketing drives the price up. Since its much less filling, people eat far more.

When defective components are manufactured, it encourages us to buy far more too.

Re:Cheap capacitors

[Anonymous Coward]

Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.

Of course not! I always leave delicate electronics in the engine compartment.

It's like y2k

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like y2k: the problem is everywhere. Except this doesn't seem like a non-issue. How the hell are you going to find every singe cap. before it explodes?

Re:It's like y2k

[tprox]

You're not. Recalls might happen, but I can only see that in cases where it really matters (cars, planes, etc.). It's a QA problem, and if it wasn't detected in the MTBF analysis and testing, then they weren't doing their job. Cutting corners = bad, but it's a business decision that needs to be made.

This is already well known

[Anonymous Coward]

in industry reliability circles. Decent motherboards and electronic equipment already avoid using electrolytic caps whereever possible due to this possibility.

Japanese OEMs in particular are very adamant about not receiving boards with these caps. You can use ceramic and tantalum caps instead of these electrolytic caps. Note that the word is elecRolytic, not electolytic...

Re:This is already well known

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I made a point of pointing out the mispelling of electRolytic and electRolyte and then I misspelled it.... sigh...

Re:This is already well known

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese OEMs in particular are very adamant about not receiving boards with these caps. You can use ceramic and tantalum caps instead of these electrolytic caps. Note that the word is elecRolytic, not electolytic...

elecTROlytic...jesus keyrist!

Re:This is already well known

[n9hmg]

Tantalum caps ARE electrolytic. It's just a solid electrolyte. I can't believe they're using water-based electrolyte, even in the "high-quality" stuff. This was just a bad copy of an "high-quality" water-based electrolyte, which is missing the additives that decrease hydrogen production, so the H2 doesn't diffuse away fast enough, and it pushes out liquid electrolyte. That means that even the good ones are slowly drying themselves out. Anybody know how long the proper ones are likely to live?

Re:This is already well known

[Anonymous Coward]

"10 years" is what i hear the audio engineers say... "less if it hasnt been used"

Not the only problem

[Bobulusman]

It seems that motherboards in general are being made more poorly lately. Last April I bought a Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard. It has been give me and others problems. Apparently, they screwed something up because the board is not technically PCI compliant on the top two pci slots. So basically, if you use the AGP slot and either of those slots with anything more taxing than a modem, you will be riddled with reboots and the like.

Not to mention that there is something else screwed up with the board because the MadOnion benchmark always identifies it as having twice as much ram as it does (I have 512 mb on two 256 mb's. It thinks I have two 512 mb's) and it can not seem to complete the PCMark test without rebooting during the ram tests. This has happened to other Soyo Dragon Plus users, so it's not like it's just the software.

And don't even get me started on how they ripped me off by not bothering to tell me that they would not give me the accessories needed to make various functions work. Had to by them seperately....

Same case with the motherboard I bought before that.

Anyway, my point is that it just seems that MB manufacturers are cutting a lot of corners, so it doesn't surprise me that they are using cheap capacitors.

Re:Not the only problem

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, they are cutting a lot of corners. If you want a quality board, shell out an extra $20-$40 and get an ASUS.

Re:Not the only problem

[Anonymous Coward]

When you buy a MB from a third tier supplier, these things shouldn't surprise you. Not to say you can't get your money's worth out of a Soyo, but you have to be careful.

Now, when boards from Abit and Asus start blowing up, that's a bit of a surprise.

Re:Not the only problem

[pVoid]

It's a question of hiarchy: there are components in your system that you just do not want to go cheap on. I've yet to buy a non Asus/Abit mother board.

Buying cheap drives? cheap mice, cheap monitors? that's fine. the failure will not potentially destroy the rest of my system.

But root components, you can't go cheap on.

Re:Not the only problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap monitor? Is your system worth more than your own health? Headaches and eyestrain don't bother you?

Oh boy...

[Anixamander]

build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end

Let the juvenile comments commence. I understand that this is an accurate description, but still...

On another note, access to /. has seemed incredibly slow today. Anyone else running into this?

Product of globalization

[anonymousman77]

When everything was made in the USA, we never had this problem. Now, all that matters is "who makes this thing cheaper?". This is what you get: Taiwanese capacitors in our mission-critical systems failing and causing who-knows-what.

No longer will the joke be "What does this red button do?" when it comes to space shuttle problems

Re:Product of globalization

[yomegaman]

Yeah, remember how reliable American cars were before the Japanese imports came along? Heck, it wasn't unusual to hear of a car that lasted three or even four years before needing replacement!

Re:Product of globalization

[Usquebaugh]

Rubbish. What are you xenophobic?

Unless you buy a known grade of electronics you have no hope of getting stable, reliable kit. American or otherwise. Quality costs period.

If you've used a cheap board for a mission critcal server then who is at fault? It ain't the supplier.

Re:Product of globalization

[Anonymous Coward]

Firestone tires, made in the US.

Re:Product of globalization

[lostchicken]

Yeah. The Toyota product I drive every day is a real piece of unreliable crap.

Re:Product of globalization

[Wyatt Earp]

Now that's BS.

When everything was made in the USA (1870s) there were still quality control issues. Ever use a John Deere plow from the 1870s and compare it to a good Turkish or Yugoslavian tractor from the 1970s.

Seriously, there have been quality control issues as long as things have been made. Why do you think that plate armor makers went to testing plate with a crossbow bolt? Because someone had made crappy armor that forced the industry into quality control testing.

When all car parts were made in the US, we had crappy cars. When all car parts for British cars were made in the UK, they had crappy cars as well.

By your point of view, I hope you are driving an early 70s Ford Galaxy or Chevy Corvair.

Cheaper parts are driven by the consumer that expects computers to cost less with each revision. A need for cheaper labor is also driven by this.

This problem has nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with quality control and undercutting production values to save money in a weak economic environment, which may end up costing the company more than it saved.

Re:Product of globalization

[EzInKy]

I sure do...first new car I bought was in '78 and had nothing but trouble with from day 1. The service department breathed a sigh of relief when the thing hit 12000 miles and went out of warranty. I didn't buy another American made car until the '90. I recall the truism in those days was never buy a car built on Monday because the workers were hung over, nor one built on Friday because they were rushing to get to the bar.

Of course it all was really due to managements philosophy of sacrificing quality for profits and get people to "uprade" to a new car every year or two. The automotive industry learned their lesson, I wonder how long it will take for some of the software producers whose business model depends on a constant upgrade cycle to learn theirs as well?

Re:Product of globalization

[anonymousman77]

Because I'm sick of replacing my cheap-o Abit board every 6 months (and constantly be near-layoffs due to globalization), I'm a xenophobe?

I've got an Intel-made motherboard from the mid-late 90s that works perfectly like it did from day 1. Can't buy them like that anymore

Re:Product of globalization

[Velox_SwiftFox]

What a comfortably short memory you must possess.

The reason electronic parts manufacturers in the United States lost market share to foreign makers in the first place was the shoddy workmanship of the US companies' products. Like the US Auto companies, they exaggerated the importance of their own prestige and assumed that this guaranteed competition did not matter, so they inflated their profits by shipping bad parts. The machine control manufacturer I worked for in the 1980s, when trying to purchase parts, would receive shipments that fit into two classes: The ones where the 10-15% non-operating parts were scattered throughout the shipment, and the other variety where the manufacturer had tested the parts, then placed what they already knew were the bad ones in the bottom of the cartons in the hope that they would thus slip by incoming inspection.

It was not until foreign companies began to supply the parts as well, usually with failure rates so low the incoming inspections were no longer necessary, that the US companies realized they could no longer get away with this crap, and began to get their own act together.

Worst case scenario: protectionism placing non-US manufacturers under a handicap with regards to US electronic parts makers - inevitable result would be the domestic suppliers slacking off on their quality again.

Re:Product of globalization

[Anonymous Coward]

>When everything was made in the USA, we never had this problem.

Because nothing beats a Pinto!

(* unless it's coming in from behind! *)

Re:Product of globalization

[pcmills]

That Toyota you drive everyday is probably made in the U.S.

Re:Product of globalization

[dnoyeb]

Say which? Learned their lesson? Surely you jest.

The auto industry in US constantly tries to accelerate their cycle to compete or beat the Japanese cycle, "by any means necessary."

Quality = time.

remove time, remove quality.

Japanese have used same parts across all their cars for years so they dont have nearly as much design work as US, but US ignores that fact and still tries to reduce lead times...such is life on the bottom line.

Re:Product of globalization

[Anonymous Coward]

So why continue to buy cheap-o Abit boards?

for the price you buy your replacements for, you could get a decent motherboard for a change. It's normally what you do when you don't like the quality made by a particular manufacturer. Next motherboard I get isn't going to be Abit. I haven't checked to see if it's a capacitor problem, but this computer crashes randomly, and I've only yet to change the mainboard.

Re:Product of globalization

[lostchicken]

Nope. Final assembly is in Japan with a 0% American Parts distribution.

Re:Product of globalization

[ces]

US automakers have a lot more commonality in parts between models than they used to.

Some US brands are reasonably decent as well, Ford Trucks and Vans, some Ford passenger cars, Chevy Silverado, Dodge Caravan, Saturn, etc. are all decent for vehicles from US automakers.

Re:Product of globalization

[EzInKy]

Agreed...my '90 Bonneville hit 186,000 miles before the ABS system went out. Only reason I junked it was the cost of repair was more than the thing was worth.

Re:Product of globalization

[dnoyeb]

Sure the quality is decent becuase they are using improved parts and such. But relative to the japanese quality gains have been small and hardfaught.

I have a 95 Chevy blazer that is the quality equivalent of my 86 Toyota Tercel. They break just as often, I alternate :D

Re:Product of globalization

[dan the person]

It crapped out after only 186K miles?

That's not much geeze, and for a '90 too. Modern cars should do 240K no worries. My '85 subaru is getting there

Supergeek to the rescuuuuue...

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Depending on whether customers retain their product warranties, this could end up being good or bad for the tech industry.

If the warranties were kept && the failures happen within the warranty period && if companies are nice, this could really cost tech companies a pretty penny.

Else, there may be a surge in people spendng to replace failed devices.

Either way, people aren't going to be happy. How many devices do you suppose are affected by these failures?

Re:Supergeek to the rescuuuuue...

[Jaysyn]

Too bad for the companies it looks like this might affect enought people for a class action lawsuit.

Jaysyn

Re:Supergeek to the rescuuuuue...

[Anonymous Coward]

KANT SPEEL TODAY?

It's happened to me

[gmajor]

Or at least I think so. Had the same symptoms (frequent, random reboots) using an Abit KA-7. Cost me $300 to get it replaced, because at the time I had no idea what was wrong with my computer.

Lo and behold, when I get my motherboard back, I see a bunch of capacitors were leaking.

This has happened to me

[techmuse]

I just replaced an MSI KT266Pro Motherboard with exactly those symptoms. The computer suddenly started crashing at strange times, and in a week could barely boot. It turned out to be the capacitors, which had ruptured at the top.

Now, who is affected?

[ChicoLance]

Yikes! But what everybody will need to know next is: Who is affected by this? Which board manufacturers used these brands? Will they actually tell us, or will we have to fight for this information?

Ick.

Re:Now, who is affected?

[Anonymous Coward]

yep i agree. i think the tech sites should help out a bit they have gotten a free ride long enough. sites like anandtech, tom`s, and amdzone
better step up and put up information and id the caps on boards they review. how many have gone to anandtech and bought e board because his site gave it approval. com`on i`m tired of all this what tech sites can we really trust?

Your motherboard is next

[jmcwork]

many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte.

Early indications of capacitor/motherboard demise include failure of spell checking software.

Simple Solution.

[Trusty Penfold]

Just glue the bung in.

Capacitors are old technology, they're not going to fail legitimately, so we can work around the fault by preventing it from happening.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens when the hydrogen gas pressure builds up enough to make the cap explode? Assuming the pressure doesn't screw up the cap internally by then, of course.

At best, glueing a cap together just delays the problem a little longer. If it's a bad cap, it's going to fail eventually.

Re:Simple Solution.

[martissimo]

Just glue the bung in.


In best Beavis voice...

I am the great Cornholio! I need super-glue for my bunghole

Re:Simple Solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be dangerous advice. The gasket is there to relieve pressure. If it is glued in, the pressure may be relieved in a more dramatic and destructive fashion.

Power supplies at risk too

[Wansu]

I'll bet these bad capacitors have found their way into many power supplies too.

Re:Power supplies at risk too

[tkjode]

I sold a system a while back, and it's PS blew up. I openned it up, and there it was, a blown capacitor. The resulting surge caused the hard drive to arc... there was a nice chunk of IC blown off and scorched. The motherboard now reports some strange hardware failure message at bootup now.

Re:Power supplies at risk too

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. In the past 4 month i had to replace 15 dead PSUs in a pool of 45 newly built machines. All of them were killed by leaking caps, and went out with sparks and lots of smoke. Never buy cheap no-name power supplies. Especially stay away from Deer and Tiger :/

Re:Power supplies at risk too

[NinjaTech]

I was working on a computer up at the shop i work at that had a Deer PSU in it, it had a cap blow in it and cooked the motherboard/processor.

Isn't that always the way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when you think your rubber bung is positioned correctly, a build up of gas blows it out the end.

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Create electronic components using inferior metallics.

2) ???

3) PROFIT!

This troll brought to you by goatse.

Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes these are obviously bad components but I am curious. Do consumer electronic manufacturers do any type of development validation or component qualification testing?

In the automotive world, this would have been caught way before production started, unless of course, the component supplier changed the electrolyte type without notifying its customers after start of production.

The amount of testing that occurs on automotive electronics is sometimes thought of as gross overkill. When I hear stories like this, it reminds me of why.

Re:Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[shivianzealot]

There certianly are groups that test these sorts of components.

Re:Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[plover]

I'm afraid the only validation most of them perform is: "Are you still the lowest bidder?"

If you want that MoBo to cost you $75 instead of $150, what are you as a consumer willing to sacrifice?

bad bad caps!

[Anonymous Coward]

two mini atx powersupplies with electrolytic caps popped causing on board filtering caps to pop

also some popular universal wall wart power supplies are popping from these crappy caps

uh oh

[tps12]

If you're trying to boot up, and your rubber bung breaks and leaks electrolyte, then I'd recommend getting tested as soon as possible, especially if you were trying to boot from a strange floppy.

Re:uh oh

[newr00tic]

"if you were trying to boot from a strange floppy."

"my floppy isn't that strange!?! As a matter of fact; I've just replied on one of those e-mails about enlargement.."

Me, too!

[Erwos]

My parents' KA7-100 spontaneously combusted one day. Luckily, my dad is good with a soldering iron, and managed to do a replacement of the caps himself.

To their credit, Abit has handled this honorably, and will do fixes for this problem for free. Not sure if you have to pay shipping or not, though.

At first, I assumed that this was a design mistake by Abit. I guess that wasn't true... Moral of this story: always have a backup computer for computer doing important things.

-Erwos

Re:Me, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

To their credit, Abit has handled this honorably, and will do fixes for this problem for free. Not sure if you have to pay shipping or not, though.

I would consider adding it to their motherboard FAQ an honorable thing to do. They did accept my SH6 on RMA (so far), but it cost me $14 to ship the defective board. At least they pay shipping on the replacement. ABIT's mobo warranty is 2 years from original purchase.

Third world countries

[Beliskner]

See! This is what happens when components are manufactured in the third world like Taiwan, Hungary and India. These are Ferengi countries - buyer beware, try suing amdmb manufacturers now with all the International laws you'll have to do jump through

Tiawanese capacitors, Hungarian IBM Deskstar factories, small Indian software partners. That's why big companies don't pay if the product's bad, they've learnt their lessons.

Re:Third world countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the last time I checked, Taiwan was still part of China and not a third-world country of its own.

Re:Third world countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Taiwan even a third world country?
Anyway besides that where do you think all your products come from. Have you looked in your computer, around your computer?
If you dont like dirt cheap components then dont buy them hypocrite.

Re:Third world countries

[aussersterne]

Welcome to the real world, slick, in which Taiwan and Hungary are not 3rd world countries.

In fact, probably 80% of the electronic components you own were manufactured in Taiwan, which is at least as large a hi-tech center as Japan in the global electronics game.

this happened to my power supply

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a loud *BANG* and a smells of burning.
I checked the mobo but nothing... and then I put my nose on the power supply and for sure the smell came from there. So I unplugged everything, removed the power supply and plugged it alone on the outlet... a few seconds later, another *BANG* and the same smell. So I unplugged from the outlet and opened the cap. For sure, 2 capacitors had _EXPLODED_ inside my power supply. Still sitting on my desk to remind me that buying the cheapest _ESSENTIAL_ parts might not always be the best move.

Artaxerxes

Re:this happened to my power supply

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you stand the smell? If a cap blows badly they stink to high heaven. I believe that the smell of dead capacitors will inherit the earth from the cockroaches.

We got hit....

[IpSo_]

The company my parents own bought 30 machines a while back which apparently all had these bad caps on the mainboards. When the first few mainboards started failing we tried to send them back on warranty, but our vendor wasn't cooperating, and shipping them all back to ABIT was resulting in too much down time. (shipping time, etc...)

So we went to the nearest electronic wholesaler in town and bought a box of the equivilent caps and soldered them on ourselves. It doesn't take more than 5 minutes and the caps themselves are very inexpensive.

Of the 30 machines we bought I think almost 25 have failed, just a matter of time before the rest fail I'm sure.

Re:On Another Note...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes..... It has been slow today (while other sites seem snappy)

blame the gangs!

[misterhaan]

they're always threatening to "pop a cap," and now this starts happening! coincidence? i think not!

Re:blame the gangs!

[Anonymous Coward]

AHAHAHAHA! ROFLMAO! Good one made me laff! And they should change "anonymous coward" to "lazy bastige."

Re:blame the gangs!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was "bust a cap"?

Re:blame the gangs!

[misterhaan]

I thought it was "bust a cap"?

sorry, i'm not in a gang. of course it works just as well if you say it that way!

The slowness issue

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Yes, the internet seemed ot slow to a crawl right around 11:30 AM central standard time.... when I started reading /. Clicking on links seems to take 30+seconds to get anywhere.

Re:The slowness issue

[TerryAtWork]

Well, they've been /.'d haven't they?

Seriously, remember that 'Slashdot is moving' thing from a few days ago?

I bet they're right in the middle of the move, is what the problem is.

Re:The slowness issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they're right in the middle of the move, is what the problem is.

Nah, it's probably the Wall Street bunko artists (I mean, brokers) looking for more hot tips (like last Friday's early release of the MSFT judgement travesty).

Hey - I hear that hula hoops are going to be the craze this Christmas!

Re:The slowness issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope still wrong - its Microsoft. Since they have just been given free reign to extend their monopilistic position, they have decided it's time the world descovered what .NET is really about. Be afraid!

Re:The slowness issue

[StarHeart]

The net seems to have been having problems off and on especially today, but for the last 3-4 days. I don't think it is a dns issue. I run dns on my machine and one moment a site works and then it doesn't. Had a problem with www.webmin.com eariler and Slashdot seems to be slow right now.

Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Instead of viewing these as commodity items, we need to insist on a motherboard that does not have self-destructive components. Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land, therefore the last generation of uncrippled boards is going to be whatever we own at the time.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[anonymous cupboard]

Regrettably my board may be ATX but it isn't going to support AGP-8x or a 2GHz+ processor. So, eventually I will upgrade. I guess a lot of other people treat the motherboard as another item to be upgraded, after all it isn't expensive compared to CPU chips or graphics cards.

Palladium is optional. You aren't forced to use it. Some s/w (such as the new DRM compliant WinXX) won't run without it, but you should always be able to run untrusted s/w.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Argh, my "Preview" button hasn't been working lately, I keep getting a bunch of thread summaries. Sorry about the excessive bold in my previous post. Here's a version that's easier on the eyes.

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

So what cpu are you going to use? AMD and Intel have said they'll be going the palladium route, so they're out. Sure, you can use the newly developed chinese chips, but they're not what you'd call top of the line...hell, they're not even middle of the road yet.

Sure, DRM won't be popular, but when you finally want to upgrade, where's your choice? That's one of the reasons why I've always joked that I want to be able to vote in US elections, even though I live in Europe; what happens in any part of the world affects you, so don't kid yourself.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

"Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world?"

I would like to believe that the rest of the world can think for itself, and perhaps serve as the last line of defense against legislative stupidity. The ability of America to dictate the laws of others is limited only by the rest of the world's willingness to assert itself. In such matters as fair use and copyright, that assertiveness has been in short supply. Too many countries have adopted their own DMCA-inspired copyright laws, to say nothing of software patents, and other bad ideas that are unfortunately "made in USA". A few overly righteous people may be shocked to learn this, but the method of buying politicians and then pushing custom-built legislation is not an "Americans only" game. We simply have more than our fair share of corporations playing it. Without the cooperation of sleazy politicians in other countries, the influence of US corporations would end at the border. Due to a global glut of sleazy politicians, DRM badware is closer than you think.

I hope you are correct. I hope the Canadians have the sense to resist not only Palladium, LaGrande, and the entire genre of crippleware, but also DMCA, TCPA, and software patents as well. If necessary, I can buy my next MB from a mail order house in Montreal.

Unless you have absolute confidence in the Canadian legislative process, it might be prudent to examine your MB and perhaps find an upgrade without electrolytic capacitors.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

So what cpu are you going to use? AMD and Intel have said they'll be going the palladium route, so they're out. Sure, you can use the newly developed chinese chips, but they're not what you'd call top of the line...hell, they're not even middle of the road yet.

Sure, DRM won't be popular, but when you finally want to upgrade, where's your choice? That's one of the reasons why I've always joked that I want to be able to vote in US elections, even though I live in Europe; what happens in any part of the world affects you, so don't kid yourself.

Oh, and you're not allowed to copy a cd you've borrowed from someone; that violates international copyright law everywhere in the world.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Palladium may be optional, but it how optional do you think it will be when a future version of Windoze won't boot without it? You might switch to Linux, but I can see the day coming when Palladium compatibility is required to boot any OS. There may be quite a market for "legacy" MBs and operating systems.

Think about it. Just how much juice do the copyright interests have when they can force a much larger industry to spend its own money to design "features" that customers don't want? And Palladium is somehow going to remain optional? Not for long!

Could the lard industry get McDonalds and Burger King to make greasier french fries, just to sell more lard?

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Oh, and you're not allowed to copy a cd you've borrowed from someone; that violates international
copyright law everywhere in the world.

You're wrong. Canada levies a special tax on blank CD-R media. It's outrageously high (last time I checked, it was 77 cents per CD-R, adding $7.70 to every 10 pack you buy), but it comes with a caveat that we are allowed to copy CDs "for private use." There is no restriction that we must OWN the CD we're copying - just that it be for "private use" (i.e., no reselling).

I'm not making this stuff up, do some googling for "canada cd levy blank" or some such combination. Here's a quick article to get you started.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Codifex Maximus]

Ya know, you really pi$$ me off with yer attitude Kombat. Calling our leader a knuckle-dragging, war-monger foisting stupid laws, the rest of the world could give a rat's a$$ about, on an apathetic populace.

But then, you're essentially right.

Anyway, DOWN WITH WATER BASED ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS! RAH! RAH! RAH!

P.S. I think the NET has popped a few caps today.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Anonymous Coward]

Celine Dion CDs all have built-in copy protection: Celine Dion. Why on Earth would you WANT to copy a Celine Dion CD in the first place? Crazy Canadians...

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[gordlea]

That can't be right, I can get a 50 pack of blanks at future shop for ~$25.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

That's exactly what private use entails; you have to own the original media. Otherwise you are distributing intellectual copyright. If you don't own the cd/lp/digital recording, it's not private use. It's implied (laws do that).

That tax is just nabbed on under the idea "we'll redistribute this money to the artists". We have it in the Netherlands too. But in actual fact it's just a tax which never goes to it's intended recipients. You can even make the claim that it's illegal, as you pay it even if you do nothing else but put your backup documents on the cd's. But it's not a justification for illegal breaking of copyright.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I hear, only Intel is embedding Palladium features straight into their procs, AMD is requiring chipset makers integrate that feature into their chipset. At least thats what I heard.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

Haven't heard that, but your probably right...but the same problem remains, doesn't it?

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed; her voice is it's own copy protection.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[juhaz]

Then it won't boot on your "saved" current hardware you are talking about in previous post either.

No difference whether its too old to support DRM or the thing is deliberately turned off. Right?

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[juhaz]

Private use DOES NOT entail owning the original media. Sure, you are "distributing intellectual copyright" but if you are only distributing it to yourself, it's private use. Doesn't matter whether the source material is your own and you are making a backup copy, or it is borrowed from friend or library. Software is specifically excluded from this, though.

Might vary from country to country but that's the way it's here in Finland (for now at least, dunno whether the new EUDCMA is going to change that) so it obviously is not specified in international IP laws.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Absolutely correct. That means legacy hardware may not boot some future DRM/crippleware OS, just as 286 processors were left in the cold when Win95 came out. Before that happens, I can imagine M$ checking for Palladium hardware and then requiring it to be enabled. IMHO, Palladium & LaGrande are the technological equivalent of Saddam's WMD programs. The best time to resist and evade this menace is right now. Apathy may be hazardous to your freedom.

If there is anything that would interest AMD and Intel in adding features that customers don't want, it would be the premature obsolesence of CPU and MB, correct? They won't be selling much of this crippleware unless people are somehow coerced into buying it. The entities that cause this stuff to exist certainly don't want it to be optional for long; therefore it won't be.

I predict that a DRM-free lifestyle will eventually require legacy hardware and a legacy OS. Step #1 is awareness of the electrolytic capacitor problem. My whole point is that your MB won't be so disposable when all the new ones have badware inside.

Leaky/exploding capacitrors?

[CTho9305]

Sure, they're a problem, but they're a great way to get free boards that you can pretty easily fix :)

The pics page is linked to at the very bottom.

Strange..

[Walterk]

Is it coincidence that I'm listening to a song from the nice band Soulfly and their song Boom ? Now everybody ready your capacitors... BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

Abit BE6-II

[Carbon Unit 549]

I had 8 of 12 Abit BE6-II (Pentium III - Slot1) boards die just after 1 year of operation. I noticed that the some of the capacitors had ooozed, but not being electrically inclined, I assumed that it was only cosmetic.

Could this or other fundamental defects be the new "Y2K" problem?

I say electOlite, you say electROlite...

[ackthpt]

Doh! Yeah, I know how to spell electrolyte (and even some stuff about dialectrics.) I was more focused on getting details right and assembling information.

This is a bit of a bugger, though, because myself and a coworker are shopping for new boards, at the moment, and concerns over lower grade commodity components to increase the manufacturer's profit is a worry.

Hopefully MSI and ASUS use Rubycon or Panasonic.

Re:I say electOlite, you say electROlite...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doh! Yeah, I know how to spell electrolyte (and even some stuff about dialectrics.)

I even know some stuff about dielectrics.

Re:I say electOlite, you say electROlite...

[ackthpt]

I'm having a bad speling day...

How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

It is easy enough to check this before you buy. Go up to the display case at your local computer parts retailer and ask to see XYZ motherboard that you are thinking of buying. Jot down all the markings on the electrolytic caps. Now go home and look up the datasheet for those caps. A good computer grade capacitor will have longevity of 2000 to 3000 hours or more at maximum ripple current and a temperature of 105 or 125C. Reputable brands are Panasonic HA or NHG, Rubycon, etc.

Forget case mods, maybe we need to start modding our mainboards with better caps.

Re:How to check before you buy

[msblack]

Capacitor lifespan of 2000-3000 hours? That's the equivalent of one work year. Have you misplaced a decimal point or are computers expected to be replaced EVERY year?

Re:How to check before you buy

[CTho9305]

That is at max current and 100C if you look carefully. I would hope your motherboard isn't that underengineered and not that hot!

Re:How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

3000 hours is actually a very good rating for an electrolytic capacitor. This rating means that the capacitor will operating within specs after being subjected to its maximum ripple current at maximum working voltage and maximum operating temperature. Electrolytic capacitor lifetime is most directly related to temperature. Panasonic TS-HA types for example will last 3000 hours at 105C but will last 200000 hours at 45C. So, keep the case temperatures down for high reliability.

Re:How to check before you buy

[dnoyeb]

I think we can safely assume the caps are failing "prematurely." Thus the rating is meaningless.

In AD 2002, war was beginning...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Somebody set us up the capacitor!
2. ????
3. PROFIT!

Beating a dead horse, PRICELESS!

This is why you should always buy quality.

[Prince_Ali]

It is always important to buy quality components. I for example bought a *shuffle shuffle* Abit... BH6. Dang. Excuse me I have to go check something.

Waddya know...

[ucblockhead]

Funny, my KA7-RAID motherboard blew a capacitor just last week. Up until then, I thought it ruled.

Anyway, I got that horrid ozone burnt-electronics smell and the damn machine powered itself off. Sometimes I can get almost a half hour of uptime before it shuts itself off. I found the casing to a capacitor next to the power hookup at the bottom of the case.

My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[Lethyos]

I can finally vent about my misery! This experience ought to be useful to anyone who is currently in the market for a motherboard. Simply put, don't buy Abit.

About 1.5 years ago, I purchased two motherboards from Abit. This one for an 800MHz Athlon system, and this board for a dual, 733MHz Coppermine system. Last semeter, my KA7 failed slowly over time. At first, I thought it was the power supply because it seemed all the capasitors around the power regulator were fried (they were encrusted with the carbon of some substance that appeared to boil out of them and burn). I replaced my power supply and motherboard. A few weeks ago, I started having interrupt failures on my VP6 (APIC errors on both CPUs). I replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD (sorry for the shameless plug, but Gigabyte denies deep linking, and this is where I got the board - a great buy). Turns out the VP6 also had fried capasitors and I *know* the PS in my that dual proc box is solid (a well tested Antec). The only two Abit mobos I've ever purchased burned out their capasitors. The moral of this story? Don't buy Abit. While this problem is wide spread, Abit seems to have a particular affliction.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[claygate]

I have an Abit SE6, while I can only wash praise upon the product I'm not sure of the condition of its caps. I'm not really an electrical engineer so I can't shine light on how or why caps work. But the board is halfway through its 3 year in constant use. I'm not sure if usage makes it worse. It is on about 6 ~ 12 hours a day sometimes doing intense audio production. But this must be like the general mass production paradigm. Advance your technology to make a quiker cheaper product which enables to make MORE of the product. That way when more fail there are more cheap ones total sold, you will still make more profit.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[BESTouff]

I can only add my voice. After chasing for the problem in software for 2 weeks, I finally realized it was a hardware problem. I replaced the PSU, swapped most cards, to finally find it was only a couple capacitors I had to change on my VP6.

My next motherboard won't be an Abit, that's sure.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[Anonymous Coward]

s/capasitor/capacitor/

plsfxthxkbye!

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[shaldannon]

You have me interested...

I have a VP6, two 750's, scsi card, dual-head video card, etc...

Thursday night while I was surfing the web, the system utterly froze. 79 days of continuous uptime, no problems, locked like *that*. Rebooted...worked OK til Saturday. Froze twice in 30 minutes.

Last time I saw this kind of behavior, there were too many computers plugged into the same circuit. With the Friday incident, I figured, "why not?" and turned my other two systems off. Saturday, both were off when the VP6 box went down.

I've had the board for about a year so I'm beginning to wonder if this is the reason for the problems. How can I go about verifying it?

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[FatlXception]

I used to have an Abit KT7-RAID board with a 900MHz Athlon. At the beginning of this school year, when I brought my computer to school, I couldn't get it to power on again after the move. I tried lots of different things, and eventually gave up and ordered a new Epox board and an XP2200+. I never figured out what was wrong with it, although I did know it was the M/B and not the CPU. I looked over it but did not find any obvious damage, no blackened or blown parts. When I read this article, I got out that M/B and had another look at it. None of the seals on the top of the caps were blown (as in the pictures), but THREE different caps were sitting at slighly odd angles. Thats when I noticed that each of the three had a bulge underneath them, and some nasty rust-colored gunk hidden down around their bases. Guess that explains the slowly increasing stability problems I'd been seeing with this board for about 9 months before the failure. You can bet I won't be buying more Abit boards, especially not after hearing these other stories.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[jelle]

You're not alone, happened to me with the same board for the Athlon. I had two, in a server and its backup (doh!)... they failed within a day of each other (doh! again! suffice to say that now they are different brands and types). Warranty from abit returned me two fixed board (new caps), but the caps blowing also fried one of the CPUs. Now those boards are 'spare trash' boards, and abit is not on the buying list until they publicly demonstrate that the caps problem is forever fixed.

And I knew one person who was using the same boards, and had the same problem, with each of them...

Seen this happen before

[Vampyl]

This is a very widespread problem. The gateway e3400 series falls prey to this, i have replaced no fewer than 30 in the past 4 months, and the gateway tech told me that they had a school with over 200 cases of this. I hate to see that problem is more widespread that a single series of motherboards.

Remove the flag!

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Remove their flag!

Re:My MSI board failed.-cheaper is better.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair."

Once again [other people's mistake] is cheaper [compared to buying the correct board] to replace/upgrade [out of the same pocket as the first] than it is to repair [Landfill filler].

And in other news,the phrase "getting your money's worth" took a nosedive in popularity polls everywere.

THIS IS THE INTERWEB, SPEAK PROPER ENGRISH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you mean e R ect L o R ytic ?


man, I am going to get spanked for that!

Let the finger pointing start

[joebagodonuts]

I can see it now.

"It's a windows problem!"

"No, It's exploding capacitors!"

Kind of like Ford & Firestone. Should be fun.

Magic Smoke

[Hollinger]

I suppose they're letting the magic smoke out prematurely.

(Lifted from the Jargon File)

Magic Smoke - n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See smoke test, let the smoke out.

Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of Murphy's Law.

Re:Magic Smoke

[SN74S181]

Ah, one of those light emitting eproms.

Don't try to use them as panel lights. They're designed for intermittant use only.

Re:Magic Smoke

[dnoyeb]

Once again technology imitates God.

Humans carry something called "the ghost" upon which being let out ends them as well.

The H-bomb

[thinkliberty]

You mean I have little hydrogen bombs all over my motherboard!

Equivilent of software timebombs for hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't the mainboard manufacturers just put a timebomb in their bios code, really! It's gonna get messy with hydrogen blowing up all over the place.

--I knew I was gonna go somehow, just not like this ;-)

CommPlus PowerSupplies

[malraid]

We had a similar, but much worse case a couple of years ago. We bought some cases that came with power supplies branded CommPlus. After about 2-6 months the power supplies would die in a really fierry death (sparks, high temparature, whatever)

The worst thing was that HDs, CD-ROMs, MBs, and procesors were also trashed. This happened in about 50% of the cases. We lost a whole lot of money. Anyone had this joyful experience also?

Dear Abit,

[uberstool]

Are you planning on doing anything to retain me as a customer other than using good capacitors in the future? I'd like to know because I need a new system. Currently I'm using my old Pentium 233 box because my vp6 is dead.

Re:uh oh-Paternity suit.

[Anonymous Coward]

" If you're trying to boot up, and your rubber bung breaks and leaks electrolyte, then I'd recommend getting tested as soon as possible, especially if you were trying to boot from a strange floppy."

Yeah! Well it did, that happened, we tested, and now the divorce.

The slashdot capacitators are at full capacity :)

[freaker_TuC]

Blame it on them ... as we just did in the article ...

Electolyte

[Anonymous Coward]

Electrions coming up in the US?

My mouse exploded.

[mypalmike]

I had a Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical which only lasted about a month. Then, at one point, I was just mousing along, and suddenly my mouse made a loud bang, which I heard, felt, and saw. Man did that scare the crap out of me. This was about a year ago, before the whole D.C. sniper news, but my first thought was seriously that a sniper had shot the mouse out of my hand.

Anyhow, I ended up deciding it must have been a buildup of gas leaking from the batteries. However, now I'd bet my money on a capacitor exploding, since it still kind of worked after that, but mouse control would be spastic, possibly indicating failure in voltage regulating circuits.

-_-_-

Re:My mouse exploded.

[antirename]

I had a microsoft natural elite keyboard do something similar. The keyboard was purchased with an Abit VP6 raid MB about a year ago (damn! gotta pull the cover and check for this!). I had never seen a keyboard literally smoke before. Spontaneous combustion, no spills, virtually brand new. I was typing when it did it. It got replaced with an old IBM "clicker". I don't think that'll go up in flames, at least, and the arrow key placement is better for Ksnakerace :)

Re:My mouse exploded.

[antirename]

Ok, my VP6 isn't leaking anything... but from now on I'm going to check it every couple of weeks while I shop for a dual Athlon board with an up-to-date AGP slot.

advise for DIY repair

[Anonymous Coward]

From Gary Headlee's FAQ

Q:Can you tell me how to do the repair myself ? A:I used to post the information on newsgroups, however several people e-mailed me to say they followed my directions and "something" went wrong , their CPU is dead and the motherboard went up in smoke. If you have the necessary skills and equipment, you really shouldn't need instructions.

This thread has lots of tips for people who want to replace motherboard capacitors themselves.

To find Garys messages messages search groups.google.com for authors=capman@att.net.

,a href=http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie= UTF-8&selm=zMVA8.6074%246T5.531331%40bgtnsc05-news .ops.worldnet.att.net>This post gives advise on chosing replacement capacitors. This one suggests a couple of other manufacturers.

He suggests replacing the origianl teapo capacitors with the the Panasonic FC series or cap from Rubycon Corporation, Nichicon, and Nippon Industries (NIC Components)

Tanatlum shortage

[huie]

Do a Google search on "tanatlum shortage" and you'll see that there was a flury of articles about a year and a half ago. This prompted development of other electrolytic capacitors, one of which is the aluminum electrolyte that seems to be having problems.

I assume that it's only taken this long to find the problem due to the development time and time to qualify (ha!) and integrate these new caps onto boards. Needless to say, I guess they needed to develop the caps better, but they may have rushed to market since there was little else available (at a decent price).

Re:Tanatlum shortage

[Flakeloaf]

It wasn't what I'd call a shortage exactly.... the suppliers definitely *had* the Tantalum, they'd just wave it in front of my nose & refuse to sell it.

Re:Red Chinese plot!

[Anonymous Coward]

All your boards are belong to us?

Computer Grade

[Detritus]

In the good old days, when mainframes ruled the earth, you could order "computer grade" electrolytic capacitors from electronics parts companies. I never saw a definition of what exactly "computer grade" was, but they were noticeably more expensive than generic electrolytic capacitors.

Part of the problem may be that the engineers are underspecing the capacitors in an effort to cut costs. A friend of mine used to have a job evaluating component reliability. He had lots of graphs that showed reliability as a function of how hard the component was driven in the circuit, for example dissipating 5W in a 5W transistor instead of using a beefier transistor.

Re:Computer Grade

[nolife]

Here is an interesting story about the marketing and construction costs of capacitors. Basically says that labor costs are not an issue with the actual constuction of caps (with the exception of screw type terminals) and that materials dominate the price. I did some searching around with Google for large quantity cap purchases. There seems to be a noteworthy difference in price between higher and lower rated voltage caps of the same cap value, so maybe they are using something closer to the limit to save some pennies. Or cutting corners during fabrications, maybe not something that directly effects the electrical characteristics but the physical ones, like thinner walls, poor sealing surfaces etc. which will lead to failure sooner..

medical device

[germinatoras]

You know, some people have home defibrulator (sp?) kits. I can just imagine the torrent of flying rubber bungs that would be released when THOSE capacitors decided to pop.

(obligatory Dave Barry) Wouldn't "Flying Rubber Bungs" be a great name for a rock band?

Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be trolling, but just in case you're not:

When everything was made in the USA, we never had this problem.

Yes. Automobiles, for example, were vastly superior in the 50's and 60's and early 70's.

Now, all that matters is "who makes this thing cheaper? This is what you get: Taiwanese capacitors in our mission-critical systems failing and causing who-knows-what."

And whose fault is that? You get what you pay for. People are so #@$% stupid about always wanting to pay the lowest price. Now, the chickens come home to roost.

Re:Troll?

[anonymousman77]

I am not trolling

And if the best example you folks can come up with is "cars from the 70s", you need to find a better example and get with the times. When was the last time you purchased a land-line phone that wasn't a POS? When was the last time you purchased ANYTHING that was built as well as it was pre-NAFTA and pre-Globalization in general?

I'm just saying that all these things people consider "commodities" where one is no better than the other, are full of problems like this where corners are cut, etc to make things cheaper

CHEAPER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

Re:Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not trolling

You're either lying, or stupid.

you need to find a better example and get with the times.

I'm sorry, get with the what?!?!?!

Does this look familiar?

When everything was made in the USA, we never had this problem.

Hmm, seems to me that in the 70s WAS when everything was made in the USA.

You can't dismiss an example just because it proves you wrong.

Re:Troll?

[John Miles]

The reason telephones are POSes these days (I agree BTW) is that they aren't owned by Ma Bell and leased to consumers anymore. Back in the rotary-dial days, Western Electric built those puppies to shrug off World War III.

For any number of reasons, the last thing the telcos wanted was customers with phones that didn't work. But as soon as there was money to be made selling you a new phone every couple of years, that old truism went right out the door. The fact that all phones made today suck ass has absolutely nothing to do with any perceived trend in overall manufacturing quality.

Put another way: over a generation's use, one of those leased Western Electric phones probably cost you or your parents a couple thousand bucks or so. Dunno about you, but I'd rather buy a disposable POS every couple of years.

this story is right on

[Lethyos]

i've never liked caps... i knew they were bad news from the start.

good to hear that all these aol'ers could be exposed stuff that explodes

Real Culprit is Chamelionic Mycrobe

[bstadil]

Remember Holly from Red Dwarf?

[A plain starfield. Narrative text draws across the screen:]

"Lone escape pod from SS Hermes - Survivors one.

Ship destroyed by Chameleonic Microbe."

[A pause, then the words 'by Chameleonic Microbe.' are deleted, and replaced with:]

"by Chamelionic Mycrobe."

[A second pause, then 'by Chamelionic Mycrobe.' is deleted, and replaced with the much simpler:]

"by shape changing weird space thing.

Non essential electrics all down, including spell checker.

Massage ends."

Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Material

[toupsie]

build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor,

Come on /. editors, you just pitched a softball to the Trolls.

So does this mean I can get my $$$ back?

[Fallen Kell]

Just wondering, cause I had a $140 Abit board blow 19 capacitors last year exactly 12 months after I purchased it... Needless to say that was the last Abit board I bought, I use ASUS now exclusively.

Been there

[Crus7y]

I've seen waves of bad production lots like this before over the last 20 years. What seems to be the problem is the parts are mismarked for operating voltage and are fine at lower voltages. It may have been something as simple as the maker using the wrong heatshrink plastic sleeves over the cans. Sometimes the board makers demand a smaller size cap because of board space limits and the cap makers try to sub a lower voltage (hence smaller) part rather than match the construction of their higher priced (and quality) competitors. BTW, all aluminum based electrolytic caps use a water based electrolyte.

advise for DIY repair

[Anonymous Coward]

From Gary Headlee's FAQ

Q:Can you tell me how to do the repair myself ? A:I used to post the information on newsgroups, however several people e-mailed me to say they followed my directions and "something" went wrong , their CPU is dead and the motherboard went up in smoke. If you have the necessary skills and equipment, you really shouldn't need instructions.

This should be no trouble to the average slashdot geek. This thread has lots of tips for people who want to replace motherboard capacitors themselves.

To find related messages from Gary search groups.google.com for "capacitors", authors=capman@att.net in the last year.

This post gives advise on chosing replacement capacitors. This one suggests a couple of other manufacturers.

He suggests replacing the original teapo capacitors with the the Panasonic FC series or caps from Nichicon.

Terrorism!!!!

[myowntrueself]

These capacitor bombs are obviously a ploy by radical elements in the IT industry to sow murder and mayhem! Well ok maybe not murder.

What I want to know is when is George Dubbaya going to nuke Taiwan for this?
Is Taiwan just going to have to line up and wait its turn?

I mean first they tell the USA to go swivel over copyright, now this! Pah! :-|

Annotation.

[Lethyos]

I botched the link tag for the VP6 board. For the curious, go here.

(If there is an error in your post, well, you should have hit the preview button!)

Re:Abit KA7 -- Me Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too. Just a few months ago. Its about a years old. I could hear them popping every once in awhile, but didn't know what it was. It stated getting very hard to boot, then finally it stoped booting. After taking it out, I found that almost all the capacitors were leaking!

At least their easy to fix...

[nomel]

if they don't burn something out by blowing up. I've replaced a couple capacitors on computers easily. All you do is solder a new one with the same values in. The first one was on my motherboard, cause by a slip of the hand. The second was on a Vodoo3 vid card (the badly placed ones right at the edge of the card). On the v3, it had power going to it for quite a while, but ran fine after i solderer the existing one back on.

If one breaks, and you don't want to/can't get your money back, you could always try putting in a new one yourself. The worst that you could do is cover things with solder...heheh.

What, are you gunna break it!?

ARGH

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely Monday.

Same here

[XenonOfArcticus]

Experienced and identified this problem last year when two Abit Slot-A mobos of ours failed at around 6 months of age. Replaced them with Socket-A systems (we were on a time crunch and didn't know if the CPUs were still good or damaged). Later, we tested the damaged systems and found that one CPU appeared to be non-functional, but the other was still ok. Both mobos had substantial black leakage on and around nearly all electrolytic caps. Both mobos were discarded. We bought a cheap slot-A mobo earlier this year and put the working CPU (an 800Mhz Athlon) back into service where it is working fine today.

A customer of ours also had an Abit Slot-A mobo of the same vintage fail about a month after ours. Again, cap leakage was evident. He got the board replaced under warranty from his vendor, and the new one is still operational.

Abit BF6

[chaobell]

We've had no end of trouble with this motherboard. I don't know who was doing the parts ordering here a couple years ago, but I'd sure like to smack them with a dead BF6 for it.

How bad is it? It's gotten to the point where if the box passes memory/hard drive tests, virus scans, and the rest of the diagnostics we put 'em through and still has weird problems, and if we find a BF6 when we crack the case, we automatically call it a dead motherboard and order them one that doesn't suck. And not once since we've started doing this have we found the mobo to NOT be the problem.

Long story short: Abit suxx0rz, don't buy their crap. :)

the true reason for those failing capacitors

[logic7]

they want you to upgrade to their new TCPA-compliant motherboards!

no, i'm not paranoid. you all think i'm paranoid, don't you?

You can live without a PC.

[smack_attack]

But can you live without your heat?

Had some capacitors blow on a heater circuit board recently, looked pretty suspicious, now we know why.

gateway uses these

[kritikal]

i work for the help desk for my edu. Over the summer, we saw a lot of the gateway desktop models that had a bad motherboard. I spent many hours on the phone with one of the techs one time and we ended up doing some troubleshooting over the phone. he asked me to look at the board itself, check connections, yada yada. afterwards, he then asked me to look at the capacitors. I did, and noted that the criss-cross tops were blown and bulging upwards. He assured me that this was the problem and that it was well-documented with gateway.

Sounds like Georgetown!

[zandermander]

First it was manhole covers, now capacitors. Only wish it were politicians...

Tantulum caps can be worse...

[awfar]

Many moons ago when disk drives were 5MB, the size of trash compactor, and looked like the U.S.S. Enterprise, they used to have the read amp circuit boards bolted directly to the Head-Disk Assembly(HDA); in fact, feeding directly into the disks filtered air space.

We had over 300 of these drives on live and development databases and they were dropping like flies quite awhile after they were installed; the tantalum caps would overheat and explode, except they would not only spray electrolyte, but spew molten tantalum, aluminum and steel as they would SHORT CIRCUIT and would often burn a nice hole through the board destroying it in the process.

Needless to say, the boards were often unrepairable, and the databases suffered for weeks as we pulled 24x7 to repair and replace them all.

It turned out to be a heat and ripple current problem.

Thanks to Tom Rose Sr. for isolating and identifying the problem 20 some odd years ago.

What motheboards should one get?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what brand of motherboards should one get?
I am in the market for one myself right now.

It seems that MSI and Abit are out of the
question.

What to get instead? Asus, Supermicro, Intel?

Anyone.

Please post what to get, not just what not to get.

I Was Writing a Paper....

[Zech Harvey]

On the PC...and it was like...*beep beep beep bleep bleep bleePOP sizzzzzzzzzzt crackle POW fizzZZZzzzZZTTTT*

(Sorry, the voices in my head told me to do it...)

Re:I Was Writing a Paper....

[DuBois]

ROFL!

Re:Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Materi

[puppetman]

ha ha.

Brings a whole new meaning to the money-shot...

as in...

"That will be $100 for the new motherboard..."

Agreed

[GooseKirk]

I've bought dozens of Asus boards over the years, but one day a few years back I needed a mobo quick, and turned to my friendly neighborhood computer store. They only had Abit boards on hand, and I, having read all kinds of glowing reviews online, figured a KA-7 would be fine.

Within a year, it had blown caps. Wasted a lot of time with that PC, trying to figure out the problem.

It was my first and last Abit board.

hungary a third world country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me? Since when is Hungary a third world country?

Re:hungary a third world country?

[Anonymous Coward]

...When you are a dumb xenophobe?

Anyway check out his website http://www.avpeekaboo.force9.co.uk/ (sunglasses or vomit bucket may be required.

I also love the fact that he is ragging on hungary and india and he is called "Avishek Chaudhuri"...

Re:hungary a third world country?

[Beliskner]

If you're not in the G8, then you're a third world country. In the United States you can get sued for sneezing the wrong way, a power which is abused. If you don't believe me, paint your face black, put on a scarf and walk around the projects at 2 in the morning, see just how long it is before your Cops stop you and kick your ass like Rodney King. I'm not xenophobic, the powers that be are xenophobic.

These strict laws make companies in the G8 to be highly suable and thus gives them more incentive to create higher quality and safer products. I'm not saying all imported stuff is trash, but I'd love to see an American trying to get his money when an amdmb capacitor catches fire and burns his house down while his children are asleep (this is the real world, computers are used in real houses - this can happen to real people so don't laugh it off).

If Enron was in China - what could we do to get our money?

Re:hungary a third world country?

[Beliskner]

I also love the fact that he is ragging on hungary and india and he is called "Avishek Chaudhuri"...

No it's not, this is my Uncle's computer

Hey one second, even if that was my real name what does that mean? What you're saying is if my surname is Smith I should wear sunglasses and join the FBI, but if my name is Chaudhuri I should wear a rag on my head and smash some planes into tall buildings? Now who's the xenophobe asshole?

ka-blam

[mikers]

Tag line of the hour:

"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage." /. Corollary:
And if I was meant to use the WWW the pages I'd visit wouldn't be /.ed

m

For once I'm glad I live in Utah

[TheMightyZog]

I was originally concerned about this since I'm currently running an Abit SE6 motherboard and have been for the last two years without a problem, but seeing as he's in the same city as I am, it shouldn't be too difficult to get it fixed. For once I'm glad I live in Utah.

Re:For once I'm glad I live in Utah

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck do a bunch of polygamists know about computers?

Re:For once I'm glad I live in Utah

[TheMightyZog]

My god, do I have to explain everything to you? When you have forty wives, you need good random number generators to decide which wife you should sleep with that night.

Deere power supplies

[phasm42]

One place I consistently see blown caps is in Deere power supplies. When the caps go in these, they explode, leaving cardboardy residue all over the board and surrounding components, with bits of the cap's packaging scattered about. Either the caps were being pushed beyond capactity by poor circuit design, or they were sucky capacitors, but I have replaced the blown caps with larger ones in 5 to 10 of these power supplies, which usually fixed them. I've also seen the same problem with certain motherboards -- one company I did some work for had 6 relatively new computers that were all flaky and started to fail because of leaky caps.

Re:Deere power supplies

[phasm42]

Sorry that should be Deer, not Deere.

Had to be done....

[perrin5]

Can you imagine what happened to the Beowulf cluster of these? It'd sound like popcorn...

Is capacitor failure the reason ...

[Lucas Membrane]

Why all my audio equipment starts losing a channel intermittently when it gets old? Seems to happen first with phono input, then the other inputs start picking up the symptom too. Cranking up the volume will usually cause the lost channel to come crashing back to life.

Re:Is capacitor failure the reason ...

[logic7]

does that come with a crackling/rustling noise when turning up the volume? then it's more likely a problem of the potentiometers. the connection between the "plates" is oxydized. try to push the volume control up and down completely for a couple of times (while the thing is turned off, unless you want to wake up the neighbors). that should help.

Couldn't resist...

[BigJimSlade]

Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc.

Yes, this will leave a bung hole in your capacitor.

"recycle" your Abit MB to Abit?

[claud9999]

With previous /. news (go search 'em yourself) about dumping of "recycled" computers in mainland China, how about if all Abit motherboards get recycled to Abit in Taiwan? :^) Mebbe we could string a bunch of boards together to send back in a container (a-la the AOL CD return.)

I've apparently fried two VP6's

[ptbarnett]

I've had two VP6 motherboards fail in the past year: the second one almost exactly a week ago. I just replaced it with an ASUS A7V333.

I never knew why, but your description showed me where to look. Two of the capacitors have something (tan-colored) seeping out of the top, and three more are bulging at the top like they are about to do the same.

I never had an explosion or a bad smell, so I didn't connect it with a catastrophic component failure.

Explosive potential of electrolytic capacitors

[Pr3d4t0r]

While considering a suitable reply to this thread, I stumbled across this and this

Fun

Re:Explosive potential of electrolytic capacitors

[falzer]

Try this for highly dangerous capacitor experiments.

Always Suspect Electrolytics

[ONOIML8]

I've worked as a professional electronics technician (radio communications) for 13 years, and grew up around the industry. The one thing I learned early on is to always suspect the electrolytics.

Any electrolytic will change value with age, they simply dry out. Change it enough and the circuit either quits or is way out of spec. But I'm talking about caps that are 20+ years old. It seems like caps made back then could hold up for that length of time.

I've noticed in newer equipment that the caps just don't hold up. This seems to be a trend in the last 10 years or so. Everything else like diodes, resistors, transistors, etc. holds up just fine as long as you don't exceed engineered values in the circuit. But caps, anymore you just cant rely on an electrolytic to stay within spec for more than a year or two.

All this time I thought it was just me and my bad luck. Guess not.

Note that I'm not talking about just computer equipment here. Most of my experience is with land mobile radio, power supplies, and telephone equipment.

If your switching power supply in your computer has gone on to the afterlife, and the fan still worked (they won't take heat buildup)......I'll lay odds it was a cap that croaked.

Re:Always Suspect Electrolytics

[Cyno]

This seems to be a trend in the last 10 years or so.

This trend has been happening in many fields for a lot longer than that. Its known as capitalism. Its not profitable to make quality products. Its profitable to make faults parts that wear out and break and wreck havoc because this opens new markets and new jobs fixing all the broken stuff. Just imagine all the people that wouldn't be able to afford to eat if we made good quality hardware that lasted forever and was designed the right way the first time, fully modular, etc.

If you can imagine that, then imagine the world we'd live in where you weren't expected to work for the basic necessities of life, but those people who wanted to work would be given the best education and tools they could ever ask for. Which form of society do you think would make the best capacitor? I'll give you a hint, it ain't capitalism. But that's okay because most ignorant democratic Americans can't imagine a society like that, they have a hard enough time understanding that the rest of the world doesn't speak English.

Re:Always Suspect Electrolytics

[yakfacts]

I would have to agree with you on the lower-quality components. I ordered cap kits for some video monitors and the new capacitors were such off-brand components that I really wondered if I should replace the old ones...which at least were name-brand.

I think it is just a case of cost. We buy from no-name suppliers in Taiwan who offer a lower cost component, and they buy from no-name suppliers who offer them a lower-cost component and suddenly you get what you pay for.

Apple Airport Base Station

[Krach42]

So THIS is what got me my excellent deal. I bought a "Dead as a Doorknob" Base station at our local university bookstore for $20 (I've bought lighter paperweights for more) and then after some searching online, I replaced two caps (which were blown) and it's worked perfect ever since...

I guess not all bad news is entirely bad... ;)

Sun mainboards too.

[jmajb]

We have 9 Sun Ultra 10 stations. Because there were some problems with the PCI cards (add on PC card), we opened one. We choose the Sun which seemed to have some loose parts inside. After opening it appeared to be the cap of a capacitor, which lay loose inside and was completely swollen. Almost all of the other capacitors were leaking. This was not incidental, then the other Suns had the same problem. We contacted Sun, who said that the problem did not exist... Do the Ultra's work, theya asked. To our amazement, we had to reply: yes. So what's your problem, was their reaction. Jac

Re:Sun mainboards too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Around when was this, this is very interesting.

Re:Sun mainboards too.

[Anonymous Coward]

would like to contact you directly about this, can you flash ur email?

Re:I thought it was because I violated that EULA..

[Anonymous Coward]

Lamest. EULA. joke. EVER.

Manufacturers not effected?

[Sivar]

Is there a way to tell which manufacturers aren't effected by this problem--that is, which ones do not purchase capacitors from Asia (or at least Taiwan)?
The list may be small, but there to appear to be manufacturers that consistantly churn out good products with only the occasional hiccup. Tyan, Supermicro, MSI, and perhaps Asus are all reliable manufacturers in general.
However, they may all be using the defective capacitors, and the problems may not be noticed until the boards have been around for a while. Remember the IBM 75GXP hard drive--it was hailed as "the" drive to have for enthusiasts at the time. It wasn't until six months and millions of drives later that it was found out they were crap.

Interesting... underpriced hardware?

[bryan1945]

I find this kind of funny after repeatedly hearing about how Apple's hardware is so overpriced, how "I can get the same performance with cheaper hardware".

I guess now we know why it is cheaper?

How capacitors are made.

[azav]

If you actually want to see how some capacitors are made, you may enjoy these links.

http://www.reynoldsindustries.com/product/7micac ap acitor/howto/index.html

http://www.energybeam.com/my-caps.html

Pretty interesting.

Re:How capacitors are made.

[Crus7y]

That's fine for mica caps, but we're talking about aluminum electrolytic caps. Their fabrication is more a chemical process than anything else. A really fine article about it is at: http://www.elna.co.jp/en/ct/c_al01.htm

The heck with the "premature" failures

[AndyBarrow]

What worries me most is the comment "many consumer electronics made with these capacitors may also fail prematurely". I'm looking around here, and I'm seeing an awful lot of "mature" consumer electronics.

This stuff could fail at any time! Oh the humanity!

Re:Dell and waranties....

[SammyJ]

I agree that these warranties are useful but make sure you read them carefully. Dell only sells extended "Limited" warranties.

I bought a dell system last year and stupidly forgot to get a Network card with it. So I just went and picked up a card from a local computer store and slapped it in. 8 months later, a cap on the NIC exploded/caught on fire and melted my PCI cards and scorched my motherboard. Could have easily burned down my house, it happened while I was away. I called Dell and they said that because the damage was caused by the NIC (That I purchased from someone other than them) I would have to replace the motherboard, sound card, and video card on my own, even though I had purchased the extra 3-year "Limited" warranty. Although they happily gave me a rediculously inflated price quote for replacement parts.

$600 later I decided to go the /. way an only build my own systems from now on. Never got anything in the way of compinasion from Dell or AMC (the maker of the NIC).

Re:Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Materi

[Waffle Iron]

Heheh ummm ... heheh umm heheh...

I got Capholio'd. Now my PC has a bunghole.

Heheh yah heheh.

Are you thrrreatening me?

You mean "Hindenburgs"... (nm)

[bkrrrrr]

(nm)

Abit is great...

[Moloch666]

Well I bought an Abit BE6 when the first came out. It's actually sort of a "hacked" board being the first to implement ATA Ultra66. I had a p3500 on it. Just replaced it recently for a faster comp. Mother is in perfect condition... although I am gonna take a closer look at those capacitors when I get home.

My new motherboard is an Abit KX7-333R. So far it is flawless.

sp -10

[daves]

electrolytic
electrolyte

Re:Did anyone read the article brief?-Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

"A few astute slashdot readers were on to something back when this article was published.

Astute my eye. Notice one even thought the poster was a troll.

"Headlee has fixed about 1,000 motherboards so far. He has a collection of about 10,000 dead capacitors in a large box as proof--something he needs to keep because he said motherboard and capacitor manufacturers have threatened to sue him. " and "The integrators, in turn, have complained to the board manufacturers and have traded information in online newsgroups. When that happens, they say motherboard and capacitor makers threaten their own round of lawsuits."

Capitalism in action. Deny everything, and sick the lawyers on anyone who dares complain.

"Many Western and Japanese suppliers of passive components are now feeling somewhat vindicated by their constant cautioning to the major CEMs about sourcing local vendors in Asia. Taiwanese companies will probably be faced with the daunting challenge of quality control, as Japanese and Western companies do all they can to exploit the present situation to their benefit--not just for aluminum capacitors, but for the wider spectrum of dielectrics, resistive elements, and magnetic products."

Cheaper isn't better. Now what role did consumers insistance on cheaper have to do with the whole thing?

BTW "/."'s 10-post in 24H sucks donkey dick. You can tell your OSDN bosses I said so.

Another problem...

[bkrrrrr]

Computer parts are not expected to last these days. I expect my computers to run flawlessly for about 10 years, but I guarantee that the company that designed them only expects the "service life" to be about 5 years at most. Computers are just so much "junk electronics" - designed to be cheap short-lifetime commodity products. They don't see a reason to design them to last.

Re:Another problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, common accounting processes dictate that computers completely depreciate in 3 years. After that' they are worthless.

How does this happen?

[Smallpond]

These electrolytic caps are basically a roll of
aluminum foil. The two electrodes are separated
only by a thin layer of aluminum oxide. We're
talking umeters/volt.

The failure mechanism is due to the series
resistance of the cap. High current through
R generates heat = breakdown.
Cheaper caps have higher series resistance.

For info from a high quality supplier see:

Nichicon

By the way, the switch to Al. from Tantalum due to
shortage? Hunh? This is like the Engineer shortage.
Tantalum is widely available, just more expensive.
Tantalum caps explode quite nicely, too.

Happend on my Epox 8KTA+

[gweihir]

The Epox has 14 capacitors with dark green insulation and marked "GEC". These are 2200uF, 16V supposedly low-ESR capacitors arranged in two banks, one to filter the output of the siwtching regulator for the CPU, the other to filter the 5V line on the mainboard after it has be decoupled from the power supply via an inductor.

I had altogether 4 blow-outs, luckily with no secondary damage. I did not observe instability with one blown out capacitor, but when I finally replaced them all, I did not realize that it was two banks and created a different balance between the banks. About 20% difference from the original (~2 blown caps in the wrong place) was enough to totally destabilize my mainboard. What happened was that the 5V line dropped to 4.9V with something like 500mVss "noise". This lead to HDDs not being found, VGA not initializeing and other random failures. After I had a second look, I discoverd that it was two banks and re-created the original values. No problem so far, runs stable again for 3 months now.

As replacement I used Rubycon ZL's, which I hope will last longer. One problem I encounterd is that the "GEC" (could not identify the manufacturer) are 10mm diameter, while the Rubycon ones are 12.5mm. As diameter seems to affect lifetime, maybe that is not an accident...

It is really disappointing to find this kind of low-quality components in a supposedly high-quality mainboard. The 8KTA+ is not low end of the price scale. I thought manufacturing standard electronics components was well understood by now! And components from reputable manufactorers are not that expensive, I paid something like 10 Euro for the replacements.

RCA Capacitors?

[aschneid]

I recently had my RCA 61" HDTV replaced after having the capacitor's blow for the second time. Searching through several AV Forums yield that quite a few other RCA owners have had the same problems.

The repair guy, on the second repair, stated that they have had quite a few calls to fix blown capacitor's. He showed me mine, and the tops were completely blown open, which makes sense considering the pop they each made when they blew. Each set of these capacitors only lasted 5-6 months before having to be replaced.

Andrew

Problems in classrooms

[mmol_6453]

My electronics teacher told me about the shipment of electrolytics they got, whose polarity markings were reversed.

Took them a couple semesters to figure out why, when the circuit was hooked up with everything in spec, caps kept popping.

Incidentally, I was thinking about the functionality of capactiors. They're not always used explicitly to "store charge," they're more often used as a sort of resistor that reacts more to AC(in the case of inductors) or DC(in the case of capacitors) current.

Having a capacitor's plates short out would seem to be just like shorting a resistor; depending on the circuit layout, the device may still work. (Unlikely, though, since adding a ten-cent component to a production design scales up with the number of units produced. For thirty million units, you've added a total cost of three million dollars.)

Re:Problems in classrooms

[dnoyeb]

Depends on the cap style. Most fail open circuit.

Caps always work by storing charge. Thats their nature. You can use that effect for different things.

If you have a car stereo and are a wasteful showboat you can put a huge useless Cap near your amps to smoth out the current when the load spikes. the caps will charge while the volts are high, and drain when the volts drop thereby supplying extra power when needed. They effectively filter out spikes/drops.

This is what they are mainly used for. Filtering noise.

Airbag modules use them to hold a few milliseconds of charge to complete deployment since the batters is in front of the car and could be cut before deployment.

They are also used for timing since their charge drain time is constant, though crystals has replaced this usage today.

Re:Problems in classrooms

[mmol_6453]

Some clarification:

True, capacitors work by storing and releasing charge. This actually has two effects, when working with AC(not necessarily 120V):

As the capacitor charges, the current transfer into the capacitor is low, until the voltage level is at a maximum. Once the voltage reaches that maximum, the current level increases. At some point, the voltage level will drop, followed by the current level, 90 degrees later.

For DC current, a capacitor is like on open switch. The voltage on one side of the capacitor has no effect on the other side. However, if the voltage level changes, the effect of changing will cause a change in the voltage level on the other side of a capacitor. This means that AC current flows across a capacitor, even if it's not in the form of moving electrons.

A capacitor is never finished charging or dischargine, really. It's actually a curve of exponential decay. However, after five "time constants" (periods determined by the capacitor's value and the rate at which it is drained) a capacitor is considered to be charged, as it is filled to 98% of its capacity.

If you use a capacitor small enough so that it is "finished" charging before your voltage level starts to decrease, then you've stifled the transfer of A current across the capacitor. This has the net effect of behaving like a resistor, except it only affects AC current. This effect is called "reactance." Inductors (similar to capacitors except they depend on magnetic fields) have a similar effect, except they react more to high-frequencies than low frequencies. (Thus, in simple terms, they allow DC, but block AC.)

My descriptions here are based on putting the device in series with the current flow. The opposite effect can be reached by placing the device in parallel with your load. (The device whose input you're affecting.)

Minor nitpick:

Capacitors are actually in more common usage than crystals, though the frequency of their usage varies depending on the application. In the hobbyist realm, capacitors are almost always the prime choice for quick-built circuits, since their use is simple, and they require only a single resistor as support circuitry.

I just had 2 MSI 694D motherboards die like tihs

[egarland]

I have been having spontaneous reboot problems with 2 MSI 694D Pro (V 1.0) motherboards which is almost certainly caused by these bad capacitors.

They each had completely different hardware and software configurations. One was my Linux server at home and the other was my Windows 2000 desktop at work. One had a single Celeron, the other 2 P3-866's. They had different sound cards, different network cards, different video cards, different RAM. The only thing they had in common was this MSI 694D Pro (V1.0) motherboard and they both had the same symptom, random spontaneous reboot without warning.

They both have black 2700uf 6.3V capacitors around the CPU sockets that have the tops bulged out with brown crusty stuff on top that smells nasty!

I troubleshot this problem for a long time and decided the problem must be something to do with the CPU power supply. Both of these boards now reboot once they get to the CPU-initialization part of boot when they have 2 CPU's in them (They have MSI DR-LED's so I can tell what part of the boot they are in.) One of the boards will run for a while with only a single Celeron 600 and all the on-board devices disabled. It runs a lot less stably with a P3-866 and won't get through the boot with a single P3-1ghz They both failed slowly, starting out rebooting just once then staying up for a month or so. All this is why I thought it had something to do with the CPU power supply. They started out rebooting every once in a while, then once a day, once an hour, now with 2 CPU's it's up to once a second.

I suspected it might have something to do with the capacitors but now that I've heard about this I'm sure that's what it is. It really bothers me since both machines were in nice, big, well-ventilated cases with good power supplies. I designed and built both machines with well-supported name brand parts. It has taken me a long time to track the problem down, and since the reboots were random I though I had them fixed many times. I have replaced one of the motherboards but the other system was using the RAID controller and I'm having a hard time finding a good replacement board. I can't believe MSI would use these shoddy capacitors in a high-end dual processor board. It cost me hours of down time, hours troubleshooting time, a new motherboard, and the time to install it, just to save a few dollars on parts! I will never buy a MSI part again!

umm

[ZipR]

Someone set us up the capacitor?
It had to be said.
On second thought, no. No it didn't.

NEVER PLUG AN ATX P/S IN WITHOUT A LOAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the power supply is expecting certain sensing circuit feedback to regulate the output voltage, munaully starting it without attaching it to the motherboard could cause damage to the power supply.

From Compute-Aid Inc's Web site, http://www.compute-aid.com/atxspec.html

Now that you all can smell the coffee....

[FamedLamer]

I'd say its safe to assume that you are all awake.

Since I got an electronics degree first, I knew of the Impending Capacitor Doom for some time now.

Since at least one person has expressed interest in a new mothrboard, but is now hesitant due the the Impentinf Capacitor Doom, let me just set the record straight:

In 90% of the cases, you will upgrade your equipment to play the next Carmack-born game engine before your electrolyte breaks down.

And before you all start demanding Tantalums from the motherboard makers, please remember that commodoty hardware is the only reason why the internet took off in the first place.

Upgrade! Upgrade! Upgrade! Your going to do it one way or another.

I fixed my dead MB, you can too!

[malloc]

If you've got a motherboard that has the usual symptoms (won't start up when you press power though PS is OK, suddenly shuts off during heavy use), then take heart:

My brother's Q-lity CPV4-T motherboard died. Before buying a new one I did a little googling, and 'bingo' I found the Abit/Garry Headlee info: Same symptoms, bulging caps. We picked up a few new caps and soon had them all replaced using $15 radio shack soldering equipment. It's still getting a burn in -- on initial testing the AGP video card didn't want to work though PCI would, but it decided to work later. Right now everything is working!

Moral of the story:
Take...

• an hour or two of time
  
• a soldering iron
  
• $3 worth of new capacitors
  
• and a bit of patience
  

...you too can fix your dead motherboard (or whatever). You don't need expensive equipment or lots of skill, just try it!

OK, you weren�t trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you really are that naive. Memorize this phrase: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

if the best example you folks can come up with is "cars from the 70s", you need to find a better example and get with the times

Get back on your tricycle, you're too young to play with flames. I picked that example because it is well known and understood and I don't have to write 10,000 words of background. You may substitute any of a number of industries. Electronics and steel come to mind. Or perhaps one that a young pup like your patronizes - toys.

My point is that if you think that something will be better just because it was "made in the USA", then you are sadly deluding yourself. All the flag waving and in the world doesn't make products better. It's about progressive attitudes and long term thinking (i.e., contrary to the greedy American fast-buck stock market driven mentality). If it's one thing that the Asian automobile manufacturers learned and then taught the Americans, it's that quality DOES matter and sitting on your fat overpaid asses instead of improving things is the fast track to obsolescence. American auto manufacturers deservedly had their asses kicked for skimming all the profit instead of re-investing it in improvements like the Japanese auto industry. Lessons learned.

I'm just saying that all these things people consider "commodities" where one is no better than the other, are full of problems like this where corners are cut, etc to make things cheaper
CHEAPER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

There we agree. In fact, that was my second point. But don't blame the far east or Mexico for American consumer stupidity. People more often want to buy cheaper rather than better. This is because they would rather live in a house full of cheap crap than have a few quality items. The crap wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand.

It's kind of amusing...

[evil_pb]

To think that motherboards all over will be committing seppuku in little tiny hydrogen explosions. I guess if you're going to lose data, that's a fairly entertaining way to do it. Beats the usual Windows "you're SOL, dude!" messages. If it's gonna happen inevitably anyway, it may as well involve fire and smoke somehow, at least that way there is some asthetic value until you realize you forgot to do backups for a while... hrm, speaking of which, I should go do tho$%%$#%^&^ YOUR COMPUTER WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 5 SECONDS.

Gainward Geforce4 ti4200

[Troodon]

A timely article for me, this might explain the problems many others have been having with Gainward cards, claimed by an apparent Gainward rep to be due to a capacitor. Cards which under the "Golden Sample" label, tout their "quality" and thus potential for overclocking.

Maybe the problem will go away

[Target Practice]

from the e-insite article:
"And the longer you wait, the worse the problem gets..."
No kidding, huh? I thought performance would improve after the leaking capacitors juiced my mobo.
In all seriousness, we've bought probably around 100 boards from a certain manufacturer who will remain nameless (because I don't remember it right now...) and in two months time, we accumulated over twenty boards with pus-filled capacitors. We tried to send them back, but the manufacturer wouldn't have that. Since that time, we've made it a habit to check all capacitors even before we do a RAM check, just because it's more likely to be the capacitors!

Re:Red Chinese plot!

[yuting]

It says Taiwanese, not Communist China. Stupid.

Abit Complaint forum

[Anonymous Coward]

I have started a thread under Abits forums dealing with motherboards titled "Slashdot Article titled "Taiwanese Capacitors Leaking, Exploding" ". Please share your Abit horror stories with this forum. Perhaps then maybe Abit will do something about this problem.
Forum Thread Url... http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?s=&thread id=118

Re:Abit Complaint forum

[jimmy_dean]

I had an Abit motherboard for the first generation Athlon chips. I went through 4 of these things! Abit now refuses to do anything for me anymore. Everytime it went bad it was because the capacitors surrounding the main processor would blow...everytime about 6 months after I got a new one. I could almost predict it. I am now using an MSI motherboard and would never again get an Abit...not just because of the bad product but because their website and customer service sucks.

Personal failure experience.

[lemonparty.org]

My family bought a Micron PC, which would randomly reboot, even when you weren't using it. One day the problem suddenly worsened, and then the computer refused to boot. The electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard had swollen, and some had broken open and leaked. This may have been partially due to the extremely cheap power supply. I believe it was only rated at 145 watts, or something awful like that. Check out the quality of these kinds of things before you guy buying the cheaper brands.

the quality of components is decreasing overall

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have followed the component market you might have noticed that too.
Major hard drive manufacturers have dropped their cheaper model warranties to 1 year, so they can use cheaper components which will last one year and few days until the disk blows.
Same thing with motherboard manufacturers. No-one buys new motherboards if the old ones are reusable, but yes, let's make the motherboards to blow up after the warranty has expired, more money for us when the user buys new motherboard.
But are those things intentional or is it planned?
I bought couple years ago microsoft intellimouse explorer when it came to the market.
Sadly that mouse has design flaw, which causes the cord to snap after ~6-9 months of use.
Luckily mine came with 5 year warranty at the time. This week my mouse broke down again, same fault, broken cord. I checked the store's web page and noticed that there's new revision of the mouse, it's now 3.0. But alas, when I checked the images of the mouse, the design flaw still exists.
Tomorrow I'm taking the mouse back to the store for fourth time, and I'm asking them if they'll replace it with logitech mouse instead new explorer one. Hopefully they agree with me, atleast the logitech dual optical is 8 euros cheaper than the ms intellimouse.
The sad thing here is the fact that those people who have bought the intellimouse explorer with one year warranty are wasting their money after one year. They might have chance to replace the mouse once, but after that, they'll end up having broken mouse on their hands. The same fault existed in older microsoft mouses, and they fixed it with new revision, but they haven't done so in this case. Well, some people never learn, especially microsoft, since it's all about profit.
I'm sorry if this writing has been slightly offtopic, but I felt it was somewhat relevant. Oh, I just remembered that my seagate hard drive is running out of warranty next month.. gotta wrap it into towel and whack it on the table abit.. gotta love warranties :P

Re:the quality of components is decreasing overall

[Maserati]

Actually, that Intellimouse should be replaced by Microsoft. I've had to deal with half a dozen at a time that needed replacing. The way it worked a year ago was I'd call MS, bitch about the mouse, they'd ask me to fax them the serial number (photocopy the underside of the mouse), then they'd send me new ones. This should work as often as the mice break.

Technically, this is actually an HP error, they designed the mouse (iirc) and MS just branded it.

This flaw can be fixed by adding a shim of some sort around the point where the cable enters the body of the mouse. That will keep the sharp edges from fraying the cable. YMMV.

Re: Soyo

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had any problems with the two Soyo Dragon Ultra (KT-333) MBs I bought a few months back. Of course, I don't have to use PCI slots because *everything* is built onto the board (USB 1 & 2, LAN, 5.1 Sound)

Actually, I think in both cases, the top two PCI slots are obstructed by a slot fan anyway. And the bottom 3 I'll probably never use.

Re:Cheap capacitors? TRY Spacewalker MB's..4 crap

[anastus]

I'm just hoping Spacewalkers attorneys are reading this, because I'm sending a large FUCK-YOU! to your company.

The capacitor problem is present on EVERY shuttle board we've used. Mosre specifically, the AV-661 and the AV-61. We've had a near 50% failure rate over 2 years with a large school board District that we built the systems for. Thes boars came highly recommended, fairly affordable in quantity and purportedly of high quality. What toal pieces of shit...we figure before te end of the 3 year contract we have with the school board over 85% of the 3000+ systems running spacewalker *shuttle* boards will die. And Shuttles response? "We have NO idea waht you are talking about..." "No one else has reported a problem..."
Fuck You spacewalker, and fuck your gatorade filled caps too...

MSI K4 Ultra info

[ackthpt]

An associate just picked up an MSI K4 Ultra during lunch. It has Rubycon (jp) 3300uf and some G-Luxon (tw) caps in the power converter and a few Nichicon (jp) scattered around the board.

G-Luxon has this insightful bit on their news page:

recently, a rumor says that some of the customers (I company in USA, F company/ M compnay/ S company in Japan) are worrying about the quality of Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor from Taiwan Manufacturers. It has resulted in a storm during Taiwanese suppliers. We are badly worrying this ill news is getting to harm LUXON'S reputation. According to the information, it was caused by some of manufacturers- L company and Y company, have failures in their products and it was raised by that L company and Y compnay used the electrolyte P-50, P-51 which are from a company named "LENYAN". For this reason, many customers misunderstand all of Taiwan Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Manufacturers are using the electrolyte including P-50 and P- 51. LUXON definitely understands that the electrolyte is one of the most important materials for Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor. In order to ensure our reliability and innovative technology, LUXON always develops the electrolyte by ourselves. We hereby declare that: LUXON ELECTRONICS CORPORATION DO NOT HAS ANY BUSINESS WITH "LENYAN" AND DO NOT EVER USE THE ELECTROLYTE CONTAINING P-50 AND P-51. We are sorry to hear that this ill rumor released by unknown defamer has caused unnecessary anxiety to our customers. We have to make the truth clear. We guarantee that our products do not use the electrolyte including P-50 and P-51. Sincerely wish having your always support and encouragement to LUXON as usual.

Voltage rating

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not necessarily bad capacitor, they're just using capacitors beyond their maximum voltage rating, and hence instead of whatever else is in the capacitor getting reduced, water instead gets reduced and hydrogen forms at the cathode in the capacitor. Arg too much chem study for me :'(

Asus A7V333 go boom

[notime]

This sounds like what happened to my Asus A7V333. I awoke in the night to the smell of burning plastic and found the system had caught fire. Asus did replace it, but I got some pics (be gentle on my DSL) and saved the shrapnel before I sent it back for repair/replacement.

List of Mobo's with this issue

[uneek]

Hi:

Is there a list of mobo's that are known to
have this problem yet?

Apple airports failing--Bad caps?

[Gilmoure]

I've seen a lot of Apple Airport base stations failing due to leaking caps. Now I know why. Hope the Linksys wireless routers don't use the same pieces. As cheap as they are, probably do. Bummer!

Strange

[dnoyeb]

Not much heard about dying BP6 boards. my BP6 has run non-stop 24-7 since I bought it several years ago. Big ole heat sing and several caps surrounding the processor are touching it. Of course the fan is overkill and the processors are quite cool.

Never had a single problem.

Five mobos repaired and counting...

[Anonymous Coward]

This may explain the high failure rate of caps on Evate mobos (WillPoD is thinking for customer always.) on Pump It Up arcade dance games. After a couple of years the motherboards get flaky or die. I've personally changed out the whole set of 25 caps on one board after another, and it usually solves the problem. It's a bit of a pain, though.

This explains the 100% ka7-100 failure rate...

[bani]

5 out of 5 ka7-100's that i have seen have failed, all with blown caps.

one of them was mine, the rest were various friends ka7-100's, and they were purchased at different times from completely different vendors.

every single one of them died with the same blown caps.

And then there's the Sun Ray

[jdoff]

Our university has had hundreds of Sun Ray 1s replaced because of a bad capacitor in the power supply. Here's Sun's FAQ on the subject:

http://www.sun.com/service/support/products/deskto ps/sunray_faq.html

My favorite part: In very few cases, there may be a noise, like a "pop" and maybe a small amount of "smoke." I really like the quotes around "pop" and "smoke." Cracks me up.

I'm sorry...

[Tokerat]

...but I couldn't help but break in into a Beavis & Butthead-style laugh when I read "blow the rubber bung"...

Coincidentally, this also happens everytime one of my C++ buddies mentions "member functions". :-)

Unfortunately, I must agree..

[dohnut]

Just got things back to normal this week actually.. Where do I start..

Ok, let me start by saying I have been building PCs for 10 years.. I don't do it as a job anymore, but I used to. I've been using Abit boards exclusively since about 1997. Out of the dozens of systems I've built with Abit, I only ever had one flakey problem with an Abit board. Up until recently that is..

I have (had) an Athlon 2100 XP running in a KR7A-RAID133 Abit board. I was replacing the heatsink in this system and one other system. Afterwards, the other system was fine, this one wasn't. I had to run the FSB at 100MHz for it to operate, and it did, flawlessly, but wouldn't run at 133MHz, like it used to. So, I figured I messed up installing the new heatsink and broke/fryed/etc something. My fault right? I won't go through the gory details, but I tried a new (insert every computer component here -- I'm not kidding) and still had the same problems. Actually no, they got worse. Eventually the new motherboard toasted my CPU. I said screw it and decided to go with Abit's KD7-RAID and used an Athlon 2200. Get that and try it, doesn't work. @&#$*&@#$ Ok, cross-ship _another_ KD7-RAID and CPU. This doesn't work either!!! Break down and buy an ASUS A7V8X. Swap out the Abit board, everything else is the same and guess what? Works perfectly.. I'm back up and running.

I don't know what's going on at Abit, but dear god. I wasted a decent sum of money on shipping alone, plus was without my main system for about 2 weeks. I'll never buy Abit again, plain and simple. The whole time I'm doing this, I'm talking about it with my co-workers and they're all, "Abit sucks!" And I was like, "Are you serious, I've never had any problems with Abit." and they'd say, "Times have changed, they've really gone downhill." Maybe I'll listen next time.. Actually, no, I probably won't.. :P

I'll take the bait.

[ONOIML8]

Way offtopic and bait for sure....but I'll play your game.

It would appear that you and I took VERY different courses in economics. We sure have vastly different experiences.

It sounds as if you are claiming that these motherboard manufacturers built thier products intending them to fail in short order. You would have me believe that they did this to keep computer repairmen employed and sell more motherboards.

I don't know many people, in any country, in any economic system who would continue to purchase those products from those manufacturers for long. Maybe if it was the only choice, which might be the case if you are proposing something like the old USSR had. (And we all know how popular thier quality products have been in the marketplace).

In the real world, competition to develop an item (like....a capacitor) is considered good. One has to remember when shopping for the item to compare specifications, so that you compare apples to apples. Competition will generally result in the lowest prices for the best specs in a given tier.

In your world you have one choice: the one the General Secretary allows. Want a better capacitor, sorry we don't make one. Want a cheaper, less durable unit, same story. The Soviet authorizes and funds the production of a limited amount of choices. But hey, you get them at cost. It's a good price but what you can design and build is going to be pretty limited by the available parts supply.

You asked me to imagine all those unemployed service people who would be starving if quality products were built. I did. I imagined television repairmen, two way radio technicians, telephone repairmen, appliance repairmen, service station attendents. Hell, I don't have to imagine, I know these people. I am one! We're not starving, we eat quite well. Thank you for your concern. There aren't quite so many of us, most have gone on to other professions. But those of us who remain in the service industry are now able to support more equipment because the quality has, for the most part, improved.

You asked me to imagine a world where one does not have to work to survive. The basics of life handed to you. I did. You and I must also have very different imaginations because I imagine a good number of poor slobs doing nothing more than living off of the handouts. How is it I can imagine this? Come to the US sometime, we see it here everyday. We have quite the welfare program, where we support people based upon race. It is a very rare case when one of these people, whose basics in life are provided for them, makes a positive contribution to society. Make a better capacitor? Hell, these people can barely make their own lunch.

No, the people who are going to make the better capacitor are the ones who have to do it or they will starve. They know damn good and well that they had better do a good job or the work won't be there next week. They want to eat and eat well.

They will make what the market demands. If the market demands a quality product, which has been engineered with quality and specifies quality components, then those people will be asked to build a quality capacitor.

You and I do agree on one thing. Ignorant Americans who think that country is a democracy do have a hard time remembering that english is not the most popular language. They would do well to learn and remember that their country is a democratic republic and that white folks are the minority in the world. I think you'll be suprised to learn that those are the very same people who oppose capitalism and support socialism in this country.

The capacitor problem with be solved. Not because some goverment leader issues an order to build a better capacitor. It won't be because a bunch of people who don't have to work to survive decide it would be a good thing to do. It will be because the market will only except a certain minimum level of quality on the lower tier.

If you live here, get educated on the candidates and vote early. I am educated and will be voting first thing in the morning.

Re:I'll take the bait.

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT, sucka. HAND.

Re:I'll take the bait.

[Cyno]

Great, so who's going to fix the harddrives and power supplies and all the parts that are no longer prifitable to make? When we design things to be cheaper to replace than fix then who's going to pay anyone to fix anything? Why not just get a new one at half the cost? Why should I continue to strive to educate myself about how to fix this stuff when it appears to be more valuable to society for me to simply conform and agree with people like you. You resemble the oposition to the open source movement, communism and various other forms of people helping eachother and giving for no reason other than they care. Its sad that I have to explain this to you. Its obvious to me that if we make quality products (doing things the right way the first time) we'd have more resources and thus have the potential of making more products (GDP anyone). The economy is not only based on how much work you do, how many products you make and how much you sell, but also how much you waste, how many people you pay to sit on their ass and brainwash stupid Americans to buy your worthless plastic crap, etc. Its a huge feedback loop that is killing our culture, if we ever had one to begin with. Capitalism and commercialism is a disease, and if you believe the synergy and propoganda surrounding this economy then you are no better than the leadership of corps like Enron, MCI, Halburton, etc.

Re:I'll take the bait.

[ONOIML8]

Ok, I don't think I'm going to sway your opinion until you get a little more life experience under your belt. But let me try anyway.

I'll answer your questions, but I'm sure you already know the answers. Nobody is going to make something if it isn't profitable. For something to be repaired there must also be some profit, some benefit.

Lots of things are already designed to be cheaper to replace than repair. You're right, nobody pays to have those items repaired. That's simple logic. Would you pay a repair technician to patch up your broken PEZ dispencer? You would pay far more than the value of the item in labor alone. If you get a new one, not only are your replacing the broken parts, you're getting everything new.

I have no idea why you would "continue to strive to educate myself about how to fix this stuff" unless.....

That sort of education is great for learning how to design improved products. Or maybe for historical preservation.

There might be some niche market there for those skills. But if an item is cheaper to replace than repair you are going to have a very hard time eating.

As a repair technician you have to look at replacement costs vs. repair costs all the time. You have to do what is best for your customer and they expect you to know. So if you're going to persue this line of work, that would be the skill you should focus on the most right now.

While I embrace open source and helping other people, you are correct that I oppose communism. I am a former cold warrier. If you would like to persue that discussion then I will be happy to educate you, and we can start that discussion by having you provide me with any long term example of a communist state that has had any benefit to the population under its control.

Allowing ones source code to be open is not communism. Please do not confuse these two concepts.

You are correct that quality products would require fewer resources. There is a curve there, and quality will rise. But for the time being most people can't afford the quality of which you speak. But once the majority of people have the low end product they will then seek to upgrade that product in features and quality. You must learn patience.

As an example of that, look to the automotive industry. In the beginning there were lots of quality cars made, each by hand. Few could afford them. When Ford began mass production, their product in no way compared in quality. But people could afford them. Once the majority had them the quality rose to the level we have today, where mass produced cars are affordable and quality products.

Henry Ford therefor brought quality products to the people. Henry Ford was a capitalist, he made great amounts of money doing this.

It is possible to be a capitalist and help others. One does not have to be a bleeding heart in order to make the world a better place.

Think of this using the rule of thumb for first responders. You can't help the other guy if you are hurt as well. Provide for your own safety as well as those you are trying to help. Capitalists work on this principle as well.

If you honestly believe that companies who are wasteful succeed, then you need to talk to any business owner and become educated. Profit margins are usually quite narrow. A manufacturer has to pay for the materials that come in to the plant. Anything not required for production is waste, and is therefore money lost to the company. Not good business sense.

I don't know that much about the other companies you mentioned, but let's talk about MCI for a moment. As a company they have done much to improve the lives of others. If you care to study the thing you'll find that their industry was not a capitalist industry. For almost 100 years the telecommunications business was a monopoly.

When the monopoly was broken up, and companies like MCI came into the picture, the costs of telecommunications dropped. Technological advancement in telecommunications boomed.

Companies like MCI have given quality long distance voice and data communications at low price to the masses.

So it's not the company, or the mission of the company that is at fault. Again it is individuals within the company who are at fault. Those individuals were working to their own interests, not those of the company.

Or perhaps you can explain how the mismanagement of a company like MCI was at benefit to the company as a whole?

You seem to believe that communism is a better way. When you look at the mismanagement of Enron, MCI, etc and you look at the largest communist experement in history you find the same things brought them down. The failure of the Soviet Union was largely due to individuals acting in their own best interest, without regard for their comrads or the long term greater good.

Help others. Help yourself in the process. Build quality that everyone can enjoy, not just the elite few.

Re:I'll take the bait.

[Cyno]

Yes, please educate me. Its not like I spent the last 5 years working for startups and large corps that are the heart of our technology sector, or what we have left of it.

I might agree with you if I didn't just watch everyone pull their money out of the tech companies, because they were told to do so while watching the news on CNN or Fox. Lack of funds caused the industry to implode. Half my friends lost their jobs. Rolling blackouts caused by mismanagement related to Enron. Almost all the large corps laid off thousands, sometimes as much as hundreds of thousands of employees. And you still think capitalism is a gift from God?

Americans work more now than ever before, because of capitalism. They have more than ever because of industrial automation. The dollar bill does not make a product, a manufacturing machine makes a product. The dollar bill just tells us who gets to have the machine and who gets to have the product, because we choose to believe in the almighty dollar. But what happens when Mr. Monopoly gets the machine and hordes it to keep all the profits to himself?

With MCI you seem to understand that competition creates a better product, however, you fail to see how all telecommunications corps create nothing but extremely poor quality products. Its not only possible but relatively easy to create a network that spans the US and offers 100+Mbps bandwidth. This type of bandwidth would allow us to do things like make phone calls, video conference, steam media, etc. It would give us freedom and cost us nothing more than the electrons to run it and maintenance, of which costs improve with quality. Compare a nation wide network where you could talk to all your friends and family for free, like you can over the internet to what we have today. How has capitalism brought us something great?

Cars are an excellent example. They used to be made out of steel and materials that would last 30-50 years. Do you think your brand new Echo will make it 10? The Echo, btw, is an ugly POS that would never have sold if Ford didn't market it like it did. Its not a quality product, but instead a cheap product that is easy to sell to dumb masses like yourself who honestly believe corps like Ford and MCI have your best interests at heart.

Pure capitalism may not be bad, but the commercial aspect of what we have is nothing but wasteful. Patents, copyrights and trademarks do not promote competition, and neither does money. The requirement of having capital to start a business prevents MOST businesses from ever getting started. And those that are lucky enough to have credit end up being bought up by largers corps who literally consume the company. Heh, guess we are a nation of consumers afterall.

Large corps tend to kill off projects that are not directly profitable no matter how helpful their R&D might be to people. Most keep ALL their R&D to themselves, again hording using the excuse of protecting their investors interests. Bullshit, its the same damned lie. Greed. Its all about money to them. If it doesn't make a profit or risks loosing money then it most likely isn't worth doing. However, there are many things that cost money, like computer systems. But I think we can agree that the return you get from a 1Ghz computer is worth far more than $300 it costs you. We have more technology that we know what to do with... or more precisely. The rich have more technology that they know what to do with and the poor will never be given the chance to use that technology because they can't afford it and aren't worth it.

Capitalism creates our class system. Do you like being middle class or lower-middle class? What about poor? Personally I don't think the class system matters. I think most people are equal in their ability to learn, communicate and do work. In fact I think most poor people pay more attention and have more interest in things that we take for granted.

Education is another great example of how capitlism fails us. We now have TV in our schools. We don't have networks or wireless nets in the classrooms, we don't have portable computers or terminals or free educational videos to hand out to the kids. We don't promote education on TV. We don't consider school a fun place to be, most equate it with our prison system. But y'know, our children are excellent consumers, aren't they?

Please, give me more example, but this time pick some that really show off the quality and value we get from capitalism, besides that lame excuse that without it I wouldn't be able to afford to eat. I'm hoping without it I won't need to ever think about money, taxes, interest, tips, investments, stocks, etc. All states that make gambling illegal should consider stock trading just another form of gambling. If we weren't so hypocritical maybe we'd open our eyes to the truth that our system really isn't working.

Send it to Underwriter's Laboratories

[Animats]

If it blows up or catches fire, and it has a UL label, Underwriter's Laboratories wants to know about it. Fill out their report form. If you check the "Yes, I agree to ship the product to UL", they'll send you mailing instructions. You send it in, they take a look, they send it back, they pay shipping. They then apply a large hammer to the manufacturer.

UL exists for the benefit of fire insurance companies; if something can cause a fire, they want to know about it.

Bad caps in our nukes?

[clovis]

Another reason to resume testing of our supply of nuclear weapons (aside from the cool pictures they make).

Yup

[crisco]

Add me to the 'Me Toos'.

We have 200 custom PIII 'industrial' boards deployed as kiosk type units. We started accumulating board failures, our manufacturer wouldn't help us and I couldn't find anyone that seemed interested in motherboard repairs. So, for lack of anything better we obtained some replacement caps and now we've got most of our boards working again.

Co-worker found a P200 system in the trash. Wouldn't boot so we replaced some suspicious caps and now my wifes friend has a free computer.

Voodoo 3

[Anonymous Coward]

It happened to me too. But I broke only one of the connectors, so I soldered the other connector on, but it wasn't pretty. I'm still not sure whether it is properly connected or not - it seemed to work fine without it.

Vile transatlantic vernacular, how vulgar!

[DickScratcher]

Dear Boy Whilst perusing my faithful old friend, /. , I came across the word 'dude', which was not in my vocabularly. Some spare time granted by the search for my missing cat, Arwen, permitted me to peruse the Oxford Dictionary. It would appear that the word 'dude' is indeed a word not restricted to use by members of 'Easy Rider' and other 60s dropouts. I quote: "fastideous aesthetic person; foppish person; holiday maker in western US, esp on ranch." It would appear that none of the /. members fulfill any of these categories. Please explain. Perplexed, Mr Scratcher

Yep, this happened to me.

[razathorn]

I built a Tbird 1 ghz box a while back for a game machine... from day one it was flaky. After a year now it finally just quit booting windows or linux (I tried linux to rule out a bad windows install with a good old 'build the kernel and watch for sig11' test). All the big caps on this board are all bloated at the top and have a nasty build up of junk where the caps appear to have 'vented'. Sun boxes may be slow compared to the mhz mofos of intel and amd today... but I'm back to using my dual 300mhz ultra 60 for just about everything outside of my work laptop. My 400mhz p2 server is still running fine too. Same with that 350 mhz k6-2 box.. hey.. wait.. is there a pattern.. yes there is!!! .. it's what happens to all goods markets when the general public gets into it.. it's flooded with cheap shit and nobody knows for sure what is good anymore.

Would the sph 30001 ps2 failures attain to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this why my ps2 is failing and many other have failed also?

It does happen....

[deBulitz]

I had my Abit KT7A-Raid board die of a blown capacitor like this several days out of warranty....grumble!

My mobo has that problem..

[soccerisgod]

..my old one that is. It's no longer working thanks to the broken capacitors. I thought it might have been heat from the cpu but I guess now I know better. It wasn't a very good motherboard anyway though, so I don't whine.

So that explains it...

[CodeBitch20]

And I thought I was the only one... ( my motherboard )

Weekend Science Project

[mrm677]

Get yourself a big electrolytic capacitor from radioshack and apply some voltage (20v should do) in opposite polarity. Make sure you cover your ears when you do ;)

*phew!*

[CAIMLAS]

*wipes brow*

I am exceedingly glad that I decided on a Gigabyte board for my latest system instead of an Abit. Too bad, Abit has had a very good reputation for quite a few years for having good boards. Looks like they'll have to rebrand. :P

DVC-Pro suffers from this as well

[lexus99]

I work for a television station and we bought 24 Panasonic DVCPro digital tape decks around four years ago. ALL have had to have every single surface mounted cap changed in them already (a few hundred caps per unit), and what really sucks, the replacements seem to be no better than the originals!

Panasonic of course denies any usage of cheap caps however. Surprised?

Ackkk!

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading this story is like watching the ring...

Not one minute goes by before something pops really loudly, and I think its the capacitors on my mobo exploding...

Stupid coke can!!!!

My MSI Failed too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly hissing noise didn't stop when i took out the fan...oh look- over there next to the memory banks, caps blowing themselves up.

So Fun!!!

Abit

[Konster]

Abit currently outsources their motherboard work to ECS.

ECS = PcChips = Complete Garbage.

Abits reputation

[Qbertino]

The BP6 is the coolest Mobo to date, and is that which gained Abit that super-dooper reputation they have (had). The sucker even has 4 (!!) EIDE Controllers on board, so that Debian/Woody won't find my HD that's as far of as 'hdg'.

There is probably no other Mobo that has been f+cked around with and modified and tweaked more often than the BP6.
In fact, I know of no other Mobo with actuall third party Fansites (http://www.bp6.com/).

But I guess I'm gonna double check from now on, if I ever consider buying an Abit again.

Vision Master Pro 512

[crok]

I've had 3 Iiyama VM Pro 512s die in the last year, with at least 2 of them sounding as if they'd had capacitors go pop. Might this be related?

One lasted 3 months, the next lasted about 6 and the third only lasted 4 weeks!

A few things I've noticed...

[Lethyos]

Here's behavior I caught on my Abit VP6 as it started to die.

First, I started getting rare APIC errors (CPU interrupts). They occurred in groups of 2-5. Later, they would be pumped out so rapidly that my system would freeze printing them to the log (or landing in deadlock). No fun.

Second, I noticed that CPU1 (2of2) began demonstrating temperature fluctuations. I thought the CPU itself might be going bad, so I did a simple experiment. I swapped the CPUs, and monitored the temperature again. No matter which chip was in the CPU1 socket, the temperature oscillated. Could this be dirty voltage on the board? I'm no EE, so I cannot speculate.

When I finally did replace the board, the capacitors did show some signs similar to my KA7 that failed. A yellow-ish residue seemed to be creaping out from between the seams at the top of some caps and around the rubber. The board had not burned up as quickly and violently as the KA7 did, but it looks the same.

So, look for carbon, leaks, or any other sign of decay on your caps. Otherwise, check for abnormalities like those described here.

I've seen this problem before

[Anonymous Coward]

The school I work for uses workstations exclusivly from a major PC Manufacturer. Last they re-called the motherboards in a large group of PCs. We had almost 200 computers that fell into that group. I've seen the bleeding caps, I've seen the effects it has on the systems staility, all I can say is it's very ugly and hard to diagnose without actually visually inspecting the caps. I can't imagine the cost to the company to replace all those boards, not to mention they had to pay a consultant to help us since replacing 200 motherboards is a very time consuming project for a small IT department. But I guess things like that are to be expected when your computers come in cow boxes. Oh and sorry about the AC post.

now you tell me.

[Grifter]

My Abit KA7 started having problems 1 year before it blew up... 2 capasators blew all over the place more about a year ago... and now you tell me it's all over the place.

*NEWSFLASH* Osama strikes fear in the heart nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Can this be considered cyber terrorism? Personally, I like the idea of little hindenburgs going off on my board. sounds cool :)

Re:Tantalums are notoriusly flaky

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA had a problem with them years ago, until they realized that it wasn't the PARTS that were at fault--it was the DESIGNS.

You must NEVER reverse bias a tantalum. It grows a crystaline "whisker" between the poles and shorts out.
If you take this fact into account and assure that your excursions never go thru zero, you won't have any problems with a tantalum.
Caps that go up in a "flash of purple fire" probably are being used beyond their voltage ratings (transients?).

[rather use] ceramic caps than risk tantalums

As has been said, the physics don't work. Devices would quickly become the size of refrigerators.

As for the general tone of your post, tantalums are specified because they ARE reliable, and for a LONG time--if (like any component) their limitations are recognized and designs are made accordingly.

Sweet

[HeX86]

YES! Where can I buy a bag of those puppies?

Can we say Capacitor Rocket?

Hook, line, and sinker

[ONOIML8]

Now you've really confused me. In one paragraph you complain because a company mass produces a low end product in quantity such that those with low income can afford it. You complain about the low quality but you acknowledge that it's made for the masses.

Then, in the next paragraph, you complain that the masses are poor and can never afford such luxury.

WTF???

By the way, if you would like a quality car you can still purchase one of several. There is a company in England that makes a fine automobile, entirely hand crafted.

It seems to me that you were the one to point out that you get what you pay for.

Now you allude that you still believe that Enron, as a company, felt it was in their best interest to do what they did. Those actions resulted in those rolling blackouts and inconveinenced you. I guess you'll have to explain to me how this was a benefit to them. All this time I thought it was mismanagement by several individuals who acted in their own interests, not that of the company. Please enlighten me.

Anyone who pulls their investments simply because of media hype deserves the losses they take. Anyone who understands investments will tell you that decisions like that should be made with more data than that. Buy low, sell high. Sorry if you took it in the shorts but this has created a great enviroment for me with stocks at low prices. I can now invest with the hope of a return. Ride the wave.

Speaking of investments, why don't you fill me in on this great network you say is easy to build. You seem to indicate that it will cost nothing to build. I would like a cut of that action. Please let me in before companies like MCI gobble that up. If there is a demand for it then it will sell. If it's as cheap as you claim then the profit margins can be high, we can make a ton of money while providing service to those who have never had it and improving service to those who require.

And that is the sweet thing about living in a democratic republic with a capitalist economy. If there is a demand for these things, and they can be done, then they will be. If the demand is great enough, over time, the costs will come down as mass production is put into place and less expensive units can be built.

It sounds as if where you live people sit around and wait for the government or corporations to do what is in the common good. That must be frustrating. I can't imagine.

Over here we tend to look at a thing and determine if we can make a go of it. In other words, we look to see if people want what we have to offer, and if they are willing to work for it. If so then we forge ahead and do it. The people get what they want and the provider makes a profit. Win+win.

You seemed to say you have worked for large corporations. You also seem bitter about that. I can see why. It sounds like your people treat corporations as some entity with a mind of it's own. That is a sad thing.

Here we realize that corporations are just large companies which are made up of hundreds or thousands of individuals. When you get that many people working toward a common goal, together as a team, it is amazing to be a part of what happens. Of course it hurts like hell when it falls apart too, like when you get a few selfish bastards such as in the Enron, MCI, or Tyco examples. But the same thing can happen with small companies or Sole Props. The difference for us is that we recoginze that corporations are simply large groups of people, that the corporations themselves are simply a tool. They do not guide themselves, they do not think or act without the input of those who are a part of them.

I'm sorry that you have a class system. That never seems to benefit anyone except those on top. I've seen examples of that in my travels around the world, I choose not to experience that for myself. Oh I wish you could come to my country. We really don't have that sort of problem. There are some who tend to pretend that such a thing exists, usually because they have low self-esteem or a low drive to do things. But here you can be down and out but come up with a great idea (killer ap) and suddenly be making a decent living. While rare, sometime you can even hit the big time. Nobody here holds anyone to a particular class.

Maybe you can come to our country. Our "technology sector" is very healthy. The last shakeup of the stock market has really weeded out those who wern't producing. The ones who remain are the ones with stable business plans, and products or services that are in demand. Lots of secure jobs with those, the kinds of jobs that a guy can retire from someday. You might want to look into that. Or if working for those large corporations has really put a bad taste in your mouth, you can consider starting your own business, be your own man. The great thing about it is that you can still start a business here for no money, I've had several friends do it. They aren't getting filthy rich.....yet. But they do earn a very decent days pay for a days work.

Re:Hook, line, and sinker

[Cyno]

You still seem to think we live in different countries. Here in the US you can't start a company without money. Here in the US corporations don't listen to their employees. They tell their employees what to do. Executive management runs corporations. If we did a psychological profile of the CEOs of all our major corporations I bet you'd find some interesting results.

But I don't have time to argue with you anymore, so I'll agree. You're right. EVERYONE is given equal oportunity. Its not like you have to have money to purchase books and and school supplies to learn, or education to get a job. Its not like you have to have money to survive here. EVERYONE just loves to give you high quality products for FREE. And they make enough for everyone. And ALL the products are built the right way from the start, they're modular and useful and never cost more than they're worth. Yes, I've been living in a dream world. Thanks for opening my eyes.

Still, I wish you had given me some well thought out examples. I wish I could agree with American society. I wish I could understand how capitalism will help my family and save us all from being required to work. Or, that it, isn't it. You still believe that EVERYONE has to work all their lives or the work will not get done. I believe that a few people have to build the automated infrustracture to get the work done so EVERYONE can have their time to live their life how they want.

Re:Hook, line, and sinker

[ONOIML8]

It sounds as if you've experienced some loser corporations. Are any of them still in business?

If a corporation was going to hire someone and tell them what to do, why would they hire anyone who went to school? That must be a good side to your experience, the corporation making all the decisions and training you. Never a worry about what to do or how to do it, they tell you.

Now my experience has been quite different. The company hires people based upon their knowledge of the position they are hiring for. Once those people become a part of the company they are expected to perform that job without being told what to do or how to do it. The corporation looks to its employees for answers, that is why those people are hired. In my experience, executive management manages the corporations, that is why they are hired, it is the function they serve.

I do agree with you that it would be nice to have my every need met. Ah, to have my every whim served by slaves. Yes, the idea of never having to work is attractive........at first.

On second thought I don't know that I could live for long without some goals, some purpose in life. I don't know many people who like that idea. But if that is truely how you feel, good luck with it. Let me know if your dream of it comes true, I'll lay odds it doesn't.

Then again, it could happen. But someone would have to roll up their sleeves and build the infrustracture. From the sounds of it that isn't going to be you, you want to be free of work.

Someone still has to take out the trash. Someone still has to clean the shitter. In your system do those people ever have any hope of being work free? Or is it just for the elite.

Sorry, but here in the real world you don't have to work forever. But you have to contribute BEFORE you retire. Most people take great pride in their contributions too.

Last Post!

[alpg]

"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I
pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He
said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors
opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked
at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around
with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said
'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...'
The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank...
It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you
attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we
would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones,
I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick,
and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never
called me again."
-- Steven Wright

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...